A blazing fireball lit up the skies over northeast U.S. states including New York and Connecticut on Friday, September 2, with multiple people capturing the event on video.

A fireball is the name given to a particularly bright meteor, which itself is a space rock that has slammed into Earth's atmosphere at such high speed that heat from air resistance envelops the asteroid in a bright flame that can be seen for miles.

Scientists measure the brightness of astronomical objects using a unit known as magnitude. The lower the value, the brighter the object is. Polaris, the polar star that has been used by Northern Hemisphere navigators for generations, has a magnitude of about +2.1. The full moon has a magnitude of about -12.6, and the sun has a magnitude of about -26.7, according to the American Meteor Society (AMS).

A fireball has a magnitude of about -4. However, many of the 112 people who submitted witness reports of the September 2 event to AMS said that particular fireball was even brighter than the moon. One user gave it a magnitude of -22.

"Saw this while I was driving," wrote one user who saw the fireball from Pennsylvania. "It was so bright I practically swerved my car because I thought it was another car coming at me. But I saw it in the sky when I looked to see what the light was."

Another witness who saw the fireball from New York wrote: "This is the 3rd fireball I've seen in my life, but the others were more fiery, red, 'slow' burn. This was extremely bright and white, gorgeous!" One New York witness described the fireball as "INCREDIBLY bright."

Some fireballs are known to make sounds. While many people didn't report hearing any sound associated with this fireball, some did. One witness from New York said they heard a "very faint double boom" after the fireball passed overhead, with the two booms separated by about half a second.

While fireballs may feel like a rare occurrence they are actually very common. AMS states that several thousand of them occur in Earth's atmosphere every day. However, most of them are never seen because they occur over unpopulated areas or are outshone by daylight.

Another reason fireballs aren't often seen is due to the relatively low number of people who are outside to notice them when they do occur at night.

That's why many videos are captured by chance, either by home security cameras or vehicle dashcams. Two videos of the September 2 fireball can be seen at the top of this article. One shows how the space rock briefly flashes just over the horizon, apparently trailed by a smaller piece of debris.

The other clip appears to have been taken from just outside a house. It shows how the fireball passes overhead, flashing brightly before disappearing over some trees.

Uncommon Knowledge

Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.

Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.

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