A huge fireball was spotted in the western sky on August 17, 2001. Witnesses from Idaho to New Mexico saw the huge meteor that seemed to fall straight down to Earth instead of making a long arc across the sky. One witness in Colorado said the meteor was so bright that he could see into his neighbor’s yard. He believes it must have been about ten times brighter than the moon.

Meteor hunters at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science believe the fireball was forty times brighter than the moon. Scientists believe the meteor was made of iron rather than rock, because of it’s straight entry path to Earth’s surface. Data from Los Alamos Laboratory in New Mexico indicates the meteor weighed roughly a ton and was traveling at 11.25 miles a second as it plummeted to Earth.

Geologist Jack Murphy, curator of Geology at the museum and head of the meteor hunter team, is trying to locate the meteorite. A meteorite is what the meteor remnant is called after it reaches Earth’s surface The research team believes the large meteor fell apart over the La Garita Mountains in southwestern Colorado, about 130 miles west of Denver. It’s a remote area with a very rugged terrain, and the fragments will be very hard to find. Iron meteorites have not been found in Colorado for over thirty years.

Scientists want to find and study meteorites to help them learn more about our solar system and how the Earth may have been formed.

To find out more about meteors on the internet, you can go to the American Meteor Society’s website at http://www.amsmeteors.org.