Astronomers Say Friday's 'Fireball' Was Extra Slow And Path Was Unusually Long

(CBS4) -- If you were one of the lucky ones to catch the meteor coming down Friday night, you weren't the only one. Dozens of people have reported their sightings to the American Meteor Society showing how far-reaching this sighting was. Now we're learning more about the phenomena from Colorado astronomers, like Director of the Fiske Planetarium John Keller, and Cloudbait Observatory Astronomer Chris Peterson.

First things first: You can call it a fireball, but that's not what all scientists call it.

"The scientific term is typically a Bollide," Keller said. "It's just a very large meteorite that would have blown up in the atmosphere."

Mountain Newsroom Reporter Spencer Wilson suggested it was similar to striking a match across a match box, and Keller said in essence that's close to what happens with friction in the atmosphere with meteors.

"That generates a huge amount of heat and energy. And it blew up in the atmosphere."

Peterson says his instruments tracked the path of the fireball Friday night starting in Steamboat and going all the way down to the New Mexico border.

"And that's unusual, for for the path to be that long," Peterson explained.

He believes the trajectory of the fireball to be pretty flat in comparison to the usual meteor and thinks it might have even bounced off the atmosphere and shot back into space, or burned up before touching down on Earth.

Peterson said either way it was unlikely any meteorites (parts of a meteor that make it to the surface) will be found from this particular event.

He clocked the blazing space chunk going 60,000 miles per hour, which he said is actually pretty slow in comparison with other recorded fireballs.

If you haven't seen the incredible video taken by Coloradans, be sure watch it here!