UFO sighting in US? Green fireball intrigues many

A green fireball in the US sky seems to have fired up the imagination of many ufologists in the country, especially because of the duration and extent of its sighting. 

The fireball appeared on Friday evening local time, even as Harvey made its way towards Texas in the form of a Category-4 hurricane. 

That it came just days after a total solar eclipse was seen across the US managed to spook many people, and they took to Twitter to express their fears. 

'Green fireball'

This is not the first time fireballs have been seen in the world. In most cases, they turn out to be ball lightning, like the one on the cover of the famous Tintin book The Seven Crystal Balls.

However, unlike lightning, this one was seen in at least a couple of states in the US and seemed to persist for much longer. 

A report in the Virginia-based Fauquier Times said: "A bright green meteor was spotted across Virginia, Pennsylvania, Maryland and West Virginia about 9:14 pm, prompting more than 50 reports to the American Meteor Society. A high concentration of sightings came from the DC area."

The American Meteor Society (AMS) clarified that more than 300 people had seen the object and contacted it.

"The fireball was seen primarily from Pennsylvania but was also seen from Ohio, West Virginia, Virginia, Maryland, New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Pennsylvania, Washington DC, and Massachusetts," it said in a statement.

Meteor or something else?

The observatory at the University of Toronto Scarborough (UTSC) caught the object on camera.

It said while putting out the footage: "The #UTSC meteor camera just captured this video. Note: automated tweet of unverified raw data, might not be a #meteor [sic]."

Many UFO enthusiasts refused to dismiss this sighting as another meteor or asteroid.

Watch the UTSC video here: