Large Fireball Lights Up Sky in New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania

A 500-pound fireball lit up the skies in Ohio, Pennsylvania, and New York just before dawn on Tuesday, ABC News reported. The blazing streaker, which hurtled at 45,000 miles per hour, was captured by NASA's Meteor Watch cameras - and some locals.

"It lit up the sky (and all it the snow of course) bright blue. Very neat," one was quoted by MailOnline as commenting.

"It was awesome... I thought a transformer blew up!" said another.

"The American Meteor Society received at least 96 reports of sightings as the meteor passed early on Tuesday," the publication added. "Though just two feet in diameter, it shone at a brighter intensity than a full moon."

NASA, through its Meteor Watch Facebook page, explained that the fireball "had an orbit that took it out to the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter" and may have crashed in Kittanning, Pennsylvania.

"There may be fragments (meteorites) scattered on the ground east of that location," the space agency noted.

Space.com said that 3 people near Pittsburgh said they heard a "boom" almost immediately after the fireball whizzed by. This, as noted by Alabama.com, is "the rare sound a meteor makes when it enters the stratosphere and explodes."

This is not the first time that such a heavenly body was spotted over the area. In September last year, a meteor was reported to have "entered the Earth's atmosphere over central Pennsylvania" and "wowed observers from Virginia to Massachusetts," Business Insider said. More than 200 sightings of the said blazing streaker was recorded.

It was also said that most of those who saw the fireball said "it began as a brilliant white color and then turned yellow, green and orange."

One of the most notable fireballs in recent years is the meteor exploded over Chelyabinsk in Russia back in 2013.

"The 20-metre-wide space rock hurtled into the skies over the city in February and began to tear apart at an altitude of 28 miles," The Guardian said. "Travelling at a speed of 12 miles per second, the rock exploded with the energy of around 500 kilotonnes of TNT, researchers found."

The shockwave underneath the huge fireball's trajectory was so powerful it can knock people off their feet. In fact, it had "shattered in more than 3,600 apartment blocks, and a factory roof collapsed."

"At its most intense, the streaking fireball glowed 30 times brighter than the sun, leaving people on the ground below with skin and retinal burns," the news source added.

Now that's one fireball you literally won't want to see up close.

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