A fireball that the American Meteor Society described as "huge" lit up the sky over the Northeast early Tuesday.
The society said it received videos and over 160 reports of the fireball, which was spotted around 1:50 a.m. Most reports were from Maine but some came from Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Vermont, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania, as well as parts of Ontario and Quebec.
One of the videos of the fireball was captured by the dashcam of a Portland, Maine police cruiser.
In a Facebook post, the Portland Police Department said Sgt. Tim Farris and Officer Graham Hults were parked and on the lookout for speeding drivers when they saw the light show. Hults can be heard uttering, "oh my god."
Michael PageVerified account
@MichaelPageWx
Fireball images cease to amaze me. Viewer Michael McCormack in Portsmouth caught this on his cam.
The post jokingly said that the officers observed either a meteor or an alien spaceship.
A fireball is a term for a very bright meteor, the AMS said.
I saw this !! I was awake, trying to get some sleep when all of a sudden the sky lit up like a giant light. I actually got out of bed and looked out the window to the east, to see if anything was there. I looked out of the windows to the west, and all was dark. How neat to see something a lot of people missed.
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