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Massive meteor lights up the skies over the United States and shakes thousands of homes with a sonic boom

By Daily Mail Reporter
Last updated at 4:06 PM on 16th April 2010

A huge meteor has lit up the skies over the midwestern United States causing a sonic boom that rattled homes and could be heard for hundreds of miles.

The large fireball blazed across over Wisconsin, Iowa, Illinois, and Missouri, turning the night to 'green-tinged' day.

It was visible for around 15 minutes from around 10pm on Wednesday, moving from west to east in the northern sky.

Some dramatic footage of the incident was captured accidentally on a police video camera from the dashboard of a squad car in Iowa.

A US National Weather Service said: 'Well before it reached the horizon, it broke up into smaller pieces and was lost from sight.

'Several reports of a prolonged sonic boom were received from areas north of Highway 20, along with shaking of homes, trees and various other objects including wind chimes.'

Astronomer Mark Hammergren thinks the meteoroid, the space rock that cause the meteor, may have been up to 6ft wide and weighed roughly a thousand pounds.

'One of the misconceptions about bright meteors is that they're due to very tiny objects,' said Hammergren, of the Adler Planetarium in Chicago, told National Geographic News.

'If something is bright enough to light up the sky like daytime and cause sonic booms throughout the entire area, it's big. It was major, if it was daytime, people would have undoubtedly seen smoke trails.'

Before it hit the ground, the meteor would have broken up into dozens or hundreds of pieces, each about the size of a football or smaller, mostly over Wisconsin. No injures or damage have been reported.

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