Jodi Hernandez reports on the cosmic close encounter that the earth is experiencing tonight and the real one Russia experienced this morning.
On a day that had a lot of people talking about meteorites and asteroids, a fireball of some sort was seen streaking across the Bay Area skies.
The fireball was seen around 7:45 p.m.
Sightings of the fireball were reported across the Bay Area and large areas of the West Coast.
It was bluish in color and appeared to be heading straight to the ground, according to one viewer in Santa Clara which is located in the center of Silicon Valley.
Meteors are pieces of rock and metal from space that fall to Earth. They burn up as they go through Earth's atmosphere, which is what apparently caused tonight's bright flash of light.
"I saw that meteor/fireball over Solano County after spending the day reporting on asteroids and fireballs," said NBC Bay Area reporter Jodi Hernandez.
Candice Guruwaiya told NBC Bay Area on Facebook she saw it in San Jose, located in the south end of San Francisco Bay. "I was leaving Safeway on Branham and Snell when I saw it. It looked like it was headed for the Capital Auto Mall area. It was a bright green when it first appeared, then it went to a bright yellow. It was awesome!" Guruwaiya posted.
Gina Johnson also saw it in San Jose. She also posted on NBC Bay Area Facebook page that she had just walked out of a food market. "It looked just like the one I saw back in October except it was a little smaller. It was greenish in color just like the one on October. Everyone in the parking lot stopped and looked at it," Johnson posted
It comes on the same night a 150-foot-wide asteroid was due to come within 17,200 miles of Earth. It was not immediately clear if the fireball had any connection to the asteroid.
Chabot astronomers in Oakland said the meteor was not related to the asteroid passing near Earth.
Gerald McKeegan, an astronomer at Chabot Space and Science Center in Oakland, said he did not see it, but based on accounts he thinks it was a "sporadic meteor." Sporadic meteors bring as much as 15,000 tons of space debris to Earth each year, according to McKeegan.
He said it was likely smaller than another meteor that landed in the Bay Area in October, which caused a loud sonic boom as it fell.
It also happened about 24 hours after a huge meteorite fell from the skies over Russia's Chelyabinsk region, resulting in a powerful blast that injured nearly 1,000 people and shattered windows across the area.
Chelyabinsk health chief Marina Moskvicheva told the Russian news agency Interfax that 985 people in her city asked for medical help and 43 were hospitalized.
Many of the injuries were reportedly from broken windows as a result of a sonic boom that followed the initial impact of the meteorite.
Someone posted the following on YouTube within an hour of the fireball sighting.
The video was titled "Shooting Star across San Francisco 2/15/2013 7:44PM." The person who posted it said he was driving south on I-280 toward the peninsula.
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