That loud boom? NASA says it was meteor entering Earth’s atmosphere

That loud boom that had some Shore residents running outside to see if something had fallen on their roofs coincided with a meteor entering Earth’s atmosphere at a speed of 41,000 mph, the Associated Press reported.

William Cooke, head of NASA’s Meteoroid Environments Office, told the AP that a fireball was first sighted over the Manhattan skyline at an altitude of 51 miles or 269,280 feet at 11:17 a.m. Tuesday. For comparison, commercial airliners typically fly at cruising altitudes of between 35,000 and 40,000 feet.

The meteor then passed over Newark before burning up in the atmosphere at 31 miles or 163,680 feet above Mountainside in Union County, according to the AP report.

However, because of its altitude, eyewitnesses as far south as Cape May County reported seeing the fireball streak across the late morning sky while residents elsewhere along the Shore simultaneously heard a loud boom similar to a military aircraft breaking the sound barrier.

What was that?:Fireball? Sonic boom?

“I know airplanes,” wrote Donna M from Woodbine in a report submitted on the American Meteor Society’s website. “Never saw anything like this. Fairly large, headed ne to sw, quickly on slightly descending trajectory. AWESOME!”

The space rock was moving at an estimated speed of about 41,000 mph. That’s 53.4 times the speed of sound. The meteor was descending at a relatively steep angle of 44 degrees from vertical, Cooke told the AP.

Amie Gallagher, director of the planetarium at Raritan Valley Community College in New Jersey, told NJ.com on Wednesday that most meteors seen streaking across the sky are actually very tiny — about the size of a fingernail — and create a shooting star effect.

“My guess is this was much larger than your fingernail,” Gallagher told NJ.com, due to the fact that eyewitnesses described the phenomenon as extremely bright and clearly visible amid the daylight.

Fragments of meteors are called meteorites when they reach the Earth’s surface, but NASA’s Meteoroid Environments Office said Tuesday’s fireball would only have been about one foot in diameter and would not have survived the ride through Earth’s atmosphere, the AP reported.

Contact Asbury Park Press reporter Erik Larsen at elarsen@gannettnj.com.