American Meteor Society confirms fireball over central Indiana

INDIANAPOLIS (WISH) — A bright burst of light spotted over central Indiana early Wednesday morning was a meteor, the American Meteor Society has confirmed to News 8.

Skywatchers from Indiana, Illinois, Kentucky, and Ohio reported seeing the meteor at around 2:20 a.m., according to data from the meteor society’s website.

Videos of the event “most definitely” show a fireball, says Robert Lunsford, a member of the American Meteor Society.

“A fireball…is a meteor that is larger and brighter than normal,” Lunsford told News 8.

Lunsford says one of the witnesses close to the projected path of the fireball reported hearing sounds coming from it, “which indicates that it survived down to the lower atmosphere and may have let small fragments called meteorites on the ground.”

The American Meteor Society estimates that roughly 50,000 fireballs enter the earth’s atmosphere every year, but most of them go unseen because they appear during daylight or over unpopulated areas like the ocean.