An Indiana officer’s dash cam captured an incredible shot of the Geminid meteor shower as he was passing through a roadway. It shows a glowing green fireball streaking across the sky.
Fireball Caught On Dash Cam
On late Wednesday, just before midnight, Cpl. Chris Cramer of the Howard County Sheriff's Department was driving his patrol car on a roadway when a flash of bright green light from the sky caught his eye. Fortunately, his dash cam got the footage of what he saw, and the Howard County Sheriff's Department shared the video on Facebook, saying that it looks like a meteor entering the atmosphere and that it appears to be a part of the peak of the Geminid meteor shower.
People from the area were quick to tag their friends, while others comment that they too saw the same fireball that evening or also spotted meteors in the same week.
The video has since been viewed 17,000 times as of writing.
Geminid Meteor Shower
The Geminids are active every December, and the second week typically marks the beginning of one of nature’s best light shows. In fact, this year's meteor shower is even expected to be the best meteor shower of 2018.
The impressive light show happens every year when the Earth passes through the trail of dusty debris coming from the mysterious 3200 Phaethon, a rocky object that is either a near-Earth asteroid or an extinct comet. When the Earth passes through its debris, they burn up in the atmosphere as “shooting stars.”
According to NASA, while most shower meteors happen when comets are taken by their orbits into the inner solar system, the Geminids are a result of a collision or breaking-up event from long ago.
“When you consider that the Geminid meteor stream has more mass than any other meteor shower, including the Perseids, whatever happened back then must have been pretty spectacular,” the agency said.
