Fireball spotted in skies from Chicago to Japan

Hundreds of people from Chicago to Japan reported seeing a fireball streaking across the sky on Monday night. According to researchers at the American Meteor Society, which tracks these larger-than-normal meteors, there were nearly 400 reports of a fireball in more than a dozen states, including Alabama, Virginia, Tennessee and Illinois. Steve Sobel captured footage of a streaking light over Chicago, where there were at least nine reports from eyewitnesses of the mysterious object. It’s not clear if the sightings across the U.S. and Japan were of the same object, though it’s not likely. Mike Hankey, operations manager for the American Meteor Society, told the Chicago Tribune that while the object on the East Coast “was definitely a fireball,” the one in Chicago’s sky “was most likely manmade”—possibly “a flare from a boat on Lake Michigan.”

With the naked eye, you could see fragments coming off the back of it, like it was something burning up.

Steve Sobel

Odd News fireball meteor