East coasters experienced a line of bright light in the sky mid-evening on Friday, scientists say it was likely a meteor.
About 400 reports were received by about 10 p.m., ET from an area spanning from North Carolina to Washington, New York to England and up to Canada, according to Robert Lunsford, fireball coordinator of the American Meteor Society.
Experts claim the meteor was of the fireball variety: a slightly larger meteor (about the size of a softball) that appears much closer to earth, and can be seen higher than five miles in the sky.
The meteor sighting set off a whole host of action on various social media sites, as viewers began tweeting and updating Facebook statuses like mad.
"I had a perfectly clear view of last night's meteor streaking by," resident Mike Fischer tweeted Saturday morning. "Really fast and bright!"
"I won't forget that meteor sighting anytime soon," One viewer also tweeted Saturday morning.
NASA's Meteoroid Environmental Office representative Bill Cooke told the Associated Press that the flash seems to be "a single meteor," moving southeast.
"Judging from the brightness," he said, "we're dealing with something as bright as the full moon. The thing is probably a yard across. We basically have [had] a boulder enter the atmosphere over the northeast."
Viewers described the object as a flash of green, red and blue encircling white light, with a long tail. It was visible for about five seconds.
"It's not an incredibly rare event, but it is very unusual to have that many people observe it," said Rob Dantowitz, director of the Clay Center Observatory, in an interview with WDHD-TV Boston. "It was unusually bright. These types of meteors happen once or twice a year. The unusual thing is that it was so well observed not so long after sunset."
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