Photo: The American Meteor Society, Getty Images
NASA confirmed that a meteorite crashed near McAllen last week — and now we have some visuals!
The American Meteor Society, a nonprofit organization based in New York that "encourages and promotes research activities of both amateur and professional astronomers who are directly interested in meteoric astronomy," shared photos over the weekend of a fragment of the meteorite that landed in the Lone Star State. The organization said it was the third meteorite fall to be recovered in three days, followed by crashes in France and Italy.
Last week, South Texas residents shared videos on social media where you can see a light streaking through the sky followed by a loud boom that even shook some houses. NASA confirmed these reports of the "atmospheric fireball." In a news release, NASA experts said they believe the object was a meteoroid that was about 2 feet long and weighed about 1,000 pounds.
The photo AMS shared shows a meteorite, albeit small, sitting in the sand on private property near El Sauz on Saturday (February 18). Planetary science researcher Robert Ward posed next to the space rock, which looks to be about the size of a russet potato. AMS also shared a photo on social media of the meteorite fragment by itself, which caused confusion in the comments about the size and crash site.
"A meteorite that large would have definitely left some sort of impact crater yet it is nestled comfortably in grass. Things don't add up," one user said.
"I highly doubt that the pictured item just softly landed in that sand," said another.
"That doesn’t look like it weighs 1000 lbs!" said another user.
Photo: The American Meteor Society
While the meteorite was about 2 feet long, it broke into fragments at an altitude of 21 miles, AMS said. "Falling debris from the meteorite was recorded on NOAA’s NEXRAD doppler weather radar and this led meteorite hunters to the general location of the fall," the organization added. The photo shared on social media is the first fragment linked to this event, not the meteorite in its entirety.
Photo: The American Meteor Society
"Although meteorites tend to hit Earth’s atmosphere at high speeds, they slow as they travel through the atmosphere, breaking into small fragments before hitting the ground," NASA said. "Meteorites cool rapidly and generally are not a risk to the public."