It came from outer space… and flew straight to Olympia.
OLYMPIA, Wash. — Cameras in Olympia recorded a fireball crossing state skies early Tuesday morning.
This is the second such missive from space to be seen in western Washington in about a week, and just in time for “May the Fourth,” an informal holiday celebrating the “Star Wars” franchise. The name of the holiday is a play on words for the iconic Star Wars phrase “may the force be with you.”
Street cameras at the Washington State Capitol Campus recorded the incident at about 12:15 a.m. Tuesday, showing multiple angles of a bright green flash with a glowing orange tail.
Witness reports logged on the American Meteor Society website around 11:30 p.m. describe the fireball in detail.
“To my perspective, it was the size of a light-pole, but much brighter. The initial light through the sky caught my attention, but the flash of light and then the disappear was really alarming. Initially, the comet/fireball was light yellow, but the terminal flash was closer to white. It is too dark outside right now, I couldn’t see any fragmentation after the flash,” wrote one witness on the AMS website.
Per astronomers at NASA, meteors originate as rocks in space that can range in size from grains of dust to small asteroids. When they enter Earth’s atmosphere and burn up, they become meteors, and especially bright meteors are called fireballs.
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