NASA Explains Mystery Object Soaring through Atlanta’s Night Skies

Atlanta residences who were up in the wee hours of the morning on Monday caught a glimpse of a strange fiery object, sailing across the Georgia skies. But NASA says not to worry. It was probably just a piece of space junk, hurtling back to Earth.

The public wasn't the only group to spot the strange object. NASA observed the event through five of their meteor cameras that are positioned throughout the southeastern US and according to their observations, the flaming spectacle was moving at about 14,000 mph when it entered our atmosphere.

"Fourteen thousand, five hundred miles per hour is pretty fast, but it's too slow to be a meteor," said William Cooke, head of NASA' Meteoroid Environment Office to ABC News. "It was possibly reentry of space junk."

To be classified as a meteor, objects typically have to be moving at 20,000 mph or faster, according to Cooke.

Technically, the piece of space junk could be considered a meteor, since the term describes objects that enter Earth's atmosphere from space, according to the American Museum of Natural History. Meteors are typically composed of comet dust no larger than a grain of rice and tend to burn up before reaching the ground. The fiery tail that trails them is made as they vaporize in our atmosphere, thus they are often called "shooting stars."

But a meteorite is a rock that falls to Earth from space; usually pieces of asteroids whose small, rocky bodies orbit the Sun, typically between Mars and Jupiter. Asteroids are much smaller than planets and can be pulled out of the asteroid belt by the strong gravitational forces exerted by Jupiter. And occasionally they strike Earth.

It is believed an asteroid or comet impact some 65 million years ago spelled the demise of the dinosaurs. The 150-kilometer-wide crater, discovered just off the Yucatan peninsula, serves as evidence for such a collision and scientists have calculated the object that formed the crater was traveling at around 30 kilometers per second, which is about 150 times faster than a jet liner.

The impact is supposed to have raised dense dust clouds that blocked the sun's rays, plunging the planet into chilled darkness and wiping out up to 70 percent of all plants and animals alive at that time.

Fortunately, Atlanta escaped unscathed.