A meteor streaked across the NYC skyline before disintegrating over New Jersey

NEW YORK — According to NASA, a meteor streaked across the New York City skyline before disintegrating over nearby New Jersey.

William Cooke, head of the space agency’s Meteoroid Environments Office, said the fireball was first spotted about 51 miles (82 kilometers) above Manhattan around 11:17 a.m. Tuesday.

The meteor passed south of Newark, New Jersey, before disintegrating 31 miles (50 kilometers) above the city of Mountainside, he said. No meteorites or other fragments of space debris reached the planet’s surface.

The space rock was moving at about 41,000 miles per hour and descended at a relatively steep angle of 44 degrees from the vertical axis, Cooke said.

The exact route is uncertain as reports are based only on eyewitness accounts and no camera or satellite data is currently available, he said.

Wednesday morning there was about 40 eyewitness accounts According to Cooke, the data is stored on the American Meteor Society’s website, which the agency also used to generate its estimates.

The fireball was not part of the Perseid meteor showerand reports of loud bangs and shaking could be explained by military aircraft that were in the area around the time of the event, he said.

Cooke said New York City experiences a daylight fireball every two years.

NASA’s Meteoroid Environments Office said in a Facebook post that small rocks, like the one that caused Tuesday’s fireball, are only about a foot (one-third of a meter) in diameter and cannot remain intact all the way to the ground.