Brilliant Fireball Shakes Southeastern Michigan with 2.0 Earthquake

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A brilliant fireball lit up the night sky over southern Michigan Tuesday (Jan. 16), dazzling skywatchers lucky enough to see it. Many more felt the earth shake from the meteor's sonic boom, according to media reports.

The meteor occurred at 8:10 p.m. CST and registered as a 2.0 magnitude earthquake, officials with the National Weather Service wrote in an alert. The American Meteor Society has received 399 sightings of the brilliant fireball, which lit up social media.Take a look at some of those sightings: 

You can see more images and videos on Twitter at #meteor. 

Editor's note: If you captured an amazing photo or video of the Michigan meteor and would like to share it with Space.com for a story or gallery, send images and comments to: spacephotos@space.com. 

Email Tariq Malik at tmalik@space.com or follow him @tariqjmalik and Google+. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook and Google+. Original article on Space.com.

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Tariq Malik
Tariq Malik
Editor-in-Chief

Tariq is the Editor-in-Chief of Space.com and joined the team in 2001, first as an intern and staff writer, and later as an editor. He covers human spaceflight, exploration and space science, as well as skywatching and entertainment. He became Space.com's Managing Editor in 2009 and Editor-in-Chief in 2019. Before joining Space.com, Tariq was a staff reporter for The Los Angeles Times covering education and city beats in La Habra, Fullerton and Huntington Beach. In October 2022, Tariq received the Harry Kolcum Award for excellence in space reporting from the National Space Club Florida Committee. He is also an Eagle Scout (yes, he has the Space Exploration merit badge) and went to Space Camp four times as a kid and a fifth time as an adult. He has journalism degrees from the University of Southern California and New York University. You can find Tariq at Space.com and as the co-host to the This Week In Space podcast with space historian Rod Pyle on the TWiT network. To see his latest project, you can follow Tariq on Twitter @tariqjmalik.