Fireball LIghts up Sky Over Midwest

A fiery ball of light witnessed by thousands as it swept over the upper Midwest on Wednesday night was almost certainly a large meteor that probably left a trail of debris across southern Wisconsin, asteroid experts say. The path of the meteor was tracked by Doppler radar at two National Weather Service stations. It travelled at an altitude of between 6 thousand and 12 thousand feet.
"It has an appearance that is completely consistent with being a bright meteor," said Mark Hammergren, an Adler Planetarium astronomer who specializes in asteroids, after viewing the Doppler images.

The object, which lit up the sky shortly after 10 p.m. CST Wednesday across parts of Missouri, Iowa, Minnesota, Illinois and Wisconsin, was very likely a piece of an asteroid, a rocky planetoid formation that orbits the sun, he said. Almost all meteors come from asteroids. It almost certainly was not from debris trailing a comet or part of a meteor shower associated with a comet, as earlier reports have speculated, Hammergren said.
"We won't know for sure until we get specimens; if pieces of it survived the fiery plunge through the Earth's atmosphere", he said. It was so large, he was fairly certain some may be found. Technically, if pieces of a meteor survive the impact, they are known as "meteorites."

In a statement on its Web site, the National Weather Service office in the Quad Cities said: "Just after 10 pm CDT Wednesday evening April 14th, a fireball or very bright meteor was observed streaking across the sky. The fireball was seen over the northern sky, moving from west to east.
Well before it reached the horizon, it broke up into smaller pieces and was lost from sight. Several reports of a prolonged sonic boom were received from areas north of Highway 20, along with shaking of homes, trees and various other objects including vehicles. As of late Wednesday evening, it is unknown whether any portion of this meteorite hit the ground."

Similarly sized meteors have produced meteorite fragments from the size of grains of sand to fist size and football-sized chunks. Meteorites are so highly prized by scientists, collectors and dealers, that teams of searchers already are preparing to go to an area in southwest Wisconsin where fragments most likely would have crashed into the ground.