RICHMOND, Ky. (WKYT) - A meteor was spotted in the Kentucky sky Tuesday night. Experts call it a fireball, a brighter version of a meteor.
EKU Astronomy Professor Dr. Marco Ciocca says nine times out of ten, when there's a flash in the sky, it's a meteor burning up in the earth's atmosphere. It becomes a meteorite once it hits the earth.
"It's like rubbing two hands together very hard, everything gets hot. So hot that they burn, and they have a big flash," explained Ciocca.
He says they sometimes make noise, either from a sonic boom or an explosion. There's no pattern to when meteors appear, they are random events that happen all the time, and it's just a matter of when they are noticed.
Experts say several thousand fireballs appear in the earth's atmosphere every day.