Note: This story was updated with NASA’s confirmation at 12:46 p.m.

That loud boom heard across Northeast Ohio Tuesday morning was the result of a meteor, according to NASA.

The Meteoroid Environments Office at NASA confirmed a meteor at about 8:57 a.m. over Northern Ohio, near Medina.

Earlier, the National Weather Service Cleveland used an optical sensor, known as a Geostationary Lightning Mapper (GLM) which looks down at the earth, to capture a flash that a forecaster told Signal Cleveland “appears likely” to be a meteor. 

The forecaster, Douglas Khan, said he heard and felt the boom this morning. The sensor, called a Geostationary Lightning Mapper (GLM), recorded the position of the flash as west of Cleveland and extending north over Lake Erie.

A sonic boom? How often does a meteor make a sound?

North Royalton resident and astronomy enthusiast Ryan Connor has an array of cameras set up outside his home to capture meteors passing over the area. His array is connected to the American Meteor Society (AMS), a nonprofit aiming to promote research and data collection about meteors. His setup is the only AMS station in Ohio. 

Unfortunately, Connor’s cameras have been down for a few weeks, but, on average, he captures about two fireball meteors each month, he said. A meteor is called a fireball when it’s exceptionally bright. 

While fireballs are fairly common, the boom this morning stuck out to Connor. Most of the fireballs he’s captured are too far away from the earth for sound to reach us. The fact that residents all over Northeast Ohio reported hearing the boom means that the meteor was very close and moving faster than the speed of sound, he said. 

“First of all, to see a fireball during the day, it has to be very, very, very bright, and that just almost never happens,” Connor said. “The fact that it actually created a sonic boom over our area, that’s probably a once-in-a-lifetime thing.”

Although Connor’s cameras were down, he caught the sound on a microphone.

“Even fighter jets don’t make noises like that,” Connor said. “A fighter jet would go by, it’d be one boom, and that would be it. With meteors like this, it creates a bunch of successive sonic booms.” 

What is the difference between a meteor, a meteorite and a meteoroid? 

The American Meteor Society breaks down the difference:

• A meteoroid is a small asteroid or rocky or icy piece of debris floating in space. 
• A meteor is the light we see that is emitted from a meteoroid as it enters the earth’s atmosphere. 
• A meteorite is a fragment of meteoroid or asteroid that survives entry to the atmosphere and hits the ground. 

How big are most meteoroids?

A visible meteor can be made up of particles ranging in size from a small pebble to a grain of sand, according to the American Meteor Society. Asteroids can be composed of rocky or metallic material but most are a mixture of materials and are more “fluffy” and less dense. The flash of light people see as meteors they enter the atmosphere are caused by the energy as the object collides with the atmosphere. 

Why was the boom heard and seen across such a large area? 

Once a meteor comes down through the atmosphere, it is still traveling incredibly fast – as fast or even faster than a jet fighter traveling at the speed of sound, according to JonDarr Bradshaw, the community engagement coordinator at the Great Lakes Science Center. 

Bradshaw explained that as an object travels through the air at this speed, air piles up in front of it. As it punches through that air, it creates the sound for the entire path of travel. In this case, that path of travel was over a good chunk of Northeast Ohio, meaning that people all along the path of travel likely heard the sonic booms the meteor emitted as it flew through the air. 

Did the meteor break up?

Bradshaw said it’s likely the meteor broke up as it traveled through the atmosphere because the atmosphere is so thick. But if the object was structurally stable enough it is possible that – or parts of it – can make it through the atmosphere and hit earth, Bradshaw said.

He pointed out that there are impact craters all over earth from past meteors — the biggest among them being what is now the Gulf of Mexico. 

If the object did reach the end of its cosmic journey over the western part of Greater Cleveland, the Lorain County Emergency Management Agency had no reports of impact damage, Director Dave Freeman said when reached by phone Tuesday morning.

Freeman was driving and did not hear the boom. He did take note of another kind of explosion, however: his phone blowing up with messages. 

Once he learned the National Weather Service believed it may have been a meteor, Freeman decided to be proactive. He sent the news out on the county emergency alert message system, he said. 

“I knew everyone in the world was going to be calling,” he said.