‘It was a fireball’: What we know about the meteor that streaked across North Texas

North Texans who happened to look up at the sky about 9 on Sunday night may have glimpsed the streak of a large green shooting star before it burst into a bright orange circle and disappeared from sight.

Photos and videos of the meteor have been filling social media feeds since.

“It was a fireball,” said one user who reported the phenomenon to the American Meteor Society. “Like something was on fire, crashing.”

By Monday afternoon, the Meteor Society had received 213 approved reports of the meteor from across Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Missouri and Louisiana, according to Robert Lunsford, a fireball coordinator for the organization.

Based on public reports, the meteor probably spent about five seconds traveling from west to east — entering the atmosphere near Sulphur Springs and potentially extinguishing near Talco, Lunsford said.

A meteor’s appearance helps determine its composition. Usually, they’re made of dust and ice left over from comets and last for a second or two. But Sunday’s longer display suggested to Lunsford that the meteor was made of metal or stone. The green color mentioned in many public reports may indicate a large amount of nickel.

Lunsford said parts of the meteor probably reached the ground in Texas, but there hadn’t been any sightings of debris by Monday afternoon.

“We have reports of sound — the sound of a sonic boom,” he said. “So what that indicates to us is that the fragments may have survived down to the lower atmosphere.”

What made Sunday night’s meteor stand out was its high visibility, glowing bright against the sky when many people were driving or spending time outdoors.

“Most folks only see one or two per lifetime,” he said. “So that’s why there’s a lot of excitement over this.”

But it’s hardly a unique event. The Planetary Science Institute, based in Tucson, Ariz., estimates 500 meteorites reach the surface of the Earth each year, though fewer than 10 are recovered.

So far in July, the Meteor Society has recorded 11 similar events in Texas — but the highest number of reports of any of those was six, meaning they weren’t nearly as widely observed as Sunday’s.

“We are getting bombarded by meteors all the time,” Lunsford said. “But most of them are very tiny and disappear as very faint streaks in the sky.”

Every year, the Perseid meteor shower is usually active from mid-July to late August, according to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. The shower is known for its fireballs — explosions that last longer than average meteor streaks.

This year, the Perseid, which began July 17, will peak Aug. 11 and 12.

But Sunday’s event was not part of the Perseid meteor shower or any other active shower, Lunsford said. It had a different time and direction of travel.