Nasa: Meteor soars over Statue of Liberty, burns up above Manhattan

A meteor soared over the Statue of Liberty before disintegrating about 30 miles above Midtown Manhattan on Tuesday morning, according to Nasa. The space rock passed through the atmosphere over the Big Apple around 11:15am, coinciding with reports from New Yorkers who saw a flash of fire streak across the sky and felt the ground lightly shaking beneath their feet.
The “daylight fireball” traveled from the Statue of Liberty to Midtown Manhattan around noon. Twenty people across New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut reported seeing the fireball stretch across the sky, with one witness describing the shooting star as illuminated in green, yellow, and white, a New York Post report said.
The spectacle lasted about 30 seconds before fragmenting into three pieces, according to an eyewitness report to the American Meteor Society. Nasa’s Meteor Watch estimates that the “daylight fireball” was first spotted about 40 miles above New York Harbor’s Upper Bay, where Lady Liberty stands. Moving at a rate of 34,000 miles per hour, “the meteor descended at a steep angle of just 18 degrees from vertical, passing over the Statue of Liberty before disintegrating 29 miles above midtown Manhattan,” Nasa wrote in a Facebook post.
No meteorites—debris from outer space that hits the Earth’s surface—were produced by the event. Fortunately, there were no reports of damages or injuries related to the meteor, as confirmed by the city’s Office of Emergency Management.
Regarding the reported shaking, experts do not believe it was connected to the meteor or any other natural event. The US Geological Survey National Earthquake Information Center received reports of shaking in the northeast New Jersey and Staten Island, New York area but ruled out the possibility of an earthquake. “An examination of the seismic data in the area showed no evidence of an earthquake,” the agency stated.
“The USGS has no direct evidence of the source of the shaking. Past reports of shaking with no associated seismic signal have had atmospheric origins such as sonic booms or weather-related phenomena.” Nasa suspects the shaking was related to reports of military activity in the area.
The sighting of the shooting star coincided with scorching temperatures in the Big Apple on Tuesday, where the mercury reached 100 degrees, feeling more like 110 degrees.