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Green Light in Sky Was Likely a Meteor

from PittsburghLive.com

The blazing green light that shot across the region's sky early Monday likely was a meteor, Air Force Space Command officials said.

The streak appeared about 5:45 a.m. and lasted for about 10 seconds, said Carnegie Science Center Buhl Planetarium presenter Jean Philpott. KDKA Radio reported that the object was seen from Indiana to Virginia, triggering several early morning phone calls to the station.

The object likely was "a large piece of space rock" called a bolide meteor -- an especially bright meteor that might leave a smoke trail as it plunges earthward at 40 miles per second, Philpott said. The meteor likely fell from the asteroid belt, a region between Mars and Jupiter where asteroids orbit the sun in the same direction as other planets in the solar system, she said.

"When they fall down into the atmosphere they burn, which was the green color that people saw," Philpott said.

Greenish light can indicate the re-entry of a booster rocket, but that likely was not the case yesterday, said officials at the Air Force Space Command in Colorado Springs, Colo.

"We don't know what it was at this point," Capt. Joe Macri of the Air Force Space Command said. "It could have been a meteor."