Meteor explodes over southern Wisconsin (w/video)

IOWA CITY - Did you see it?
According to the National Weather Service, a fireball or very bright meteor was seen streaking across the sky from west to east around 10:04 p.m. David Sheets, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service, said the meteor exploded over Iowa County in southwest Wisconsin at an elevation of about 24,000 feet.
The meteor was seen in northern Missouri, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa and southern Wisconsin, but Sheets said the National Weather Service didn’t have much additional information on the meteor.
“We don’t really track meteors,” he said. “It’s not really weather.”
Robert Mutel, a professor of physics and astronomy at the University of Iowa, said meteors are not uncommon. Objects from space hit the Earth every day, Mutel said, but they are rarely noticed because they strike the ocean or are not visible because the time of day.
“This, really, is quite a common occurrence,” said Mutel, who did not see the meteor.
Mutel said the meteor was not part of a meteor shower, which occurs when rocks from the path of a comet are intercepted by Earth’s atmosphere in burn up.
“They can come at any time,” he said. “What you’re really seeing is extremely small particles. You must think, ‘Wow, that must be some big object.’ Most of them you see are grains of sand.”
However, Mutel estimated the meteor witnessed Wednesday night was probably closer to the size of a fist.
“I would’ve pegged it much bigger than that,” said Iowa City resident Lenni Kangas.
Kangas, 77, said he was sitting in his glassed-in family room at 10 p.m. when he saw the meteor.
“I just happened to look up and I saw this flaming object coming down,” he said. “It was very bright.”
Kangas said his initial reaction was the object was an aircraft in trouble, but then he realized it was going much too fast. The object appeared to be very close, Kangas said. In fact, Kangas thought the object impacted nearby.
Sheets said broken up pieces of the meteor started some forest fires in Wisconsin. Prior to the explosion, people along Highway 20 in Iowa reported a “sonic boom-type phenomenon” that rattled some homes. Mutel said that can be attributed to the meteor traveling faster than the speed of sound, which at sea level is 761 mph. Mutel said the meteor, despite friction from the Earth’s atmosphere, was probably traveling roughly 2,000 mph.
“The meteor is definitely going much faster than the local speed of sound,” he said.
Iowa City Police Sgt. Denise Brotherton said dispatchers took several calls from citizens who reported seeing the colorful fireball. Mutel said the colors could be attributed to atmospheric gases burning.
“When the gases get superheated, they glow in different colors,” he said.
Mutel said the meteor is essentially just a rock that’s been orbiting space since the formation of the solar system. There are basically two kinds of meteors, he said, rocky ones that look similar to granite and ones comprised of iron and nickel. Mutel said he didn’t know what this meteor was made of.
The next meteor shower is expected on April 22, Mutel said.
A sheriff's deputy in Howard County captured this spectacular video of the meteor from his dash camera... http://bit.ly/9TfZN5