Predawn Fireball Outshines Moon, One of Brightest NASA Recorded in Past 5 Years [VIDEOS]

NASA instruments recorded a meteor brighter than the Moon as it flew by the satellite last week; it was one of the brightest observed by NASA in the past five years.

The fireball lit up the sky in the predawn hours of Aug. 28, a treat for any night owls who happened to gazing at the sky from several southeastern states at about 3:30 a.m. EDT.

"Recorded by all six NASA cameras in the Southeast, this fireball was one of the brightest observed by the network in 5 years of operations," Bill Cooke, head of the Meteoroid Environment Office at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., wrote on NASA's Watch the Skies blog.

At its brightest, the meteor was 20 times more luminous than that night's full moon, casting its shadow on the ground as it blazed across the predawn sky.

The videos below show the full moon to the left of the screen being rapidly outshone by the fireball. 

Cooke described the meteor as "a piece of asteroid" and said it weighed more than 100 pounds and was about 2 feet across, moving northeast at about 56,000 miles per hour.

The space rock entered Earth's atmosphere above the Georgia/Tennessee border and began to break apart above Ocoee, Tenn. at an altitude of 33 miles, Cooke wrote.

As the meteor burnt up, it slowed to less than half of its entry speed. When NASA instruments lost track of the fireball it had descended to an altitude of 21 miles and slowed to 19,400 miles per hour, Cooke said.

"Sensors on the ground recorded sound waves ("sonic booms") from this event, and there are indications on Doppler weather radar of a rain of small meteoritic particles falling to the ground," he wrote.

Earlier this year a massive fireball entered the atmosphere over Spain, stunning skywatchers, and in February a fireball over Russia was among the most powerful ever recorded.