Meteor over Massachusetts prompts reports of booms across US and Canada

A meteor over Massachusetts during the weekend ultimately prompted reports of booms and sightings across New England into Canada. The American Meteor Society said that the meteor in question was about 3ft (1 meter) wide as it entered the atmosphere around the New Hampshire border with Massachusetts , north of Boston. Officials with the US space agency Nasa confirmed that the meteor was natural material, not a satellite or space debris – and that it entered the atmosphere at 2.06pm on Saturday. Robert Lunsford, the American Meteor Society program monitor, said the group received dozens of reports from Delaware to Montreal with people either hearing a double boom, feeling the ground shake or seeing the fireball – which he said looked like a shooting star in the daytime sky. The double boom reportedly shook buildings across Massachusetts into Rhode Island. A dashboard camera in New York captured the meteor streaking across the sky there. “It was definitely bigger than a normal fireball, about a yard wide,” he said. But Lunsford said it was unlikely the meteor struck the ground. “We would need more information about the trajectory, the speed and other aspects to know for sure if it hit the ground – but if it didn’t burn up, then it would have landed in the ocean,” he said. …