Of particular note in the news recently has been the “fireball” witnessed by the thousands over Texas. Many initial reports cited last week’s satellite collision, hypothesizing that the sighting was a result of falling debris from the crash. Other fireballs have appeared recently, although they’ve received considerably less media coverage. On Friday the 13th of this month, stunned watchers in Kentucky witnessed another fireball, this time intensely green in color, whose appearance was forceful enough to rattle windows and shake buildings. Just hours before that in Italy, astronomers recorded three fireballs, one of which appeared ten times brighter than the moon.

Scientists now contend that the fireballs are not falling man-made space debris, but instead are actual meteors. Meteors hit the Earth’s atmosphere every day, but only occasionally do “meteor storms” occur, in which hundreds and thousands of objects amount to visible fireballs in the sky. Scientists are now carefully watching this recent spate of fires-in-the-sky to see if we’re in the midst of another large-scale storm.

Just for reference: a meteroid is a small particle of debris; when that particle, which can be as small as a grain of sand to as large as a boulder, enters the Earth’s atmosphere, it becomes known as a “meteor.” Some people refer to these falling objects as “shooting stars” or “falling stars.” If a meteor hits the Earth’s surface intact, it’s known as a “meteorite.”