Watch a spectacular fireball streak across the Missouri sky as meteor shower peaks

If you caught sight of the dazzling meteor that blazed across the Missouri sky Monday night, you saw no ordinary shooting star — it was a fireball.

More than 120 people reported seeing the fireball — a bright, slow-moving meteor — that lit up the sky just before 9 p.m., the American Meteor Society reported. Sightings were also reported in Kansas, Oklahoma, Illinois, Indiana, Minnesota, Nebraska, Wisconsin and Nevada.

The meteor appears to have flown east to west, fizzling out somewhere near Wellsville, according to AMS.

Video footage shows the meteor taking an almost missile-like approach before erupting in a bright, terminal flash that illuminated the sky.

NASA experts say the meteor was about the size of a basketball — weighing in at roughly 220 pounds — and is believed to have broken off of an asteroid, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported. The meteor hurled across the night sky at 33,500 mph — more than 40 times the speed of sound — causing the sonic boom reported with sightings.

The meteor sighting came amid the peak of the Taurid meteor shower, the collective name of two meteor streams that happen at the same time: the North Taurids and South Taurids, McClatchy news group reported. The Taurids are known for producing few but radiant meteors.

“The Taurids are rich in fireballs, so if you see a Taurid it can be very brilliant and it’ll knock your eyes out,” NASA meteor expert Bill Cooke told Space.com. “It’s simply the fact that when a Taurid appears it’s usually big and bright.”

This story was originally published November 13, 2019 at 9:26 AM with the headline "Watch a spectacular fireball streak across the Missouri sky as meteor shower peaks."