SPOKANE, Wash. — If you were looking in the eastern skies Monday night, you may have seen a bright shooting star!
At approximately 10:45 p.m. Pacific Time on Monday, May 20th, a meteor was spotted over western Montana and it was visible to viewers in North Idaho and Eastern Washington.
The American Meteor Society, which compiles and analyzes meteor and fireball reports, plots the meteor passing directly over Glacier National Park. An impressive video from the Montana Learning Center in Helena, MT shows the meteor crossing the sky and staying illuminated for at least 8 seconds, which is an impressively long time!
A KREM 2 viewer sent us this video from their in-law's house in North Spokane, showing what appears to be a visible meteor over the region Monday night.
Meteors, bits of cosmic rock and debris, are typically traveling at speeds ranging from 25,000 to 160,000 mph, or about 11-72 kilometers per second! Because of the massive amount of friction once hitting the atmosphere, the meteor begins to vaporize. These two factors cause the meteor to glow until all of its mass is gone. Smaller meteors are gone in less than a second and are nothing more than shooting stars in the night skies. But bigger ones, up to 8 tons in mass, can take several seconds to burn up completely. These larger meteors tend to be called "fireballs."
Since these events happen so quickly and randomly, it's impossible to react to it and take a video before it's gone, so most videos of such events are security or dash cameras that constantly record and point in the right direction and the right time.
DOWNLOAD THE KREM SMARTPHONE APP
DOWNLOAD FOR IPHONE HERE | DOWNLOAD FOR ANDROID HERE
HOW TO ADD THE KREM+ APP TO YOUR STREAMING DEVICE
ROKU: Add the channel from the ROKU store or by searching for KREM in the Channel Store.
Fire TV: Search for "KREM" to find the free app to add to your account. Another option for Fire TV is to have the app delivered directly to your Fire TV through Amazon.
Apple TV: Search "Spokane News from KREM" in the Apple store or follow this link.
To report a typo or grammatical error, please email webspokane@krem.com.