A bright meteor was seen streaking across Michigan skies on Monday in dozens of videos across Metro Detroit.
The American Meteor Society logged 111 reports from multiple states after the fireball appeared around 9:30 p.m.
NASA said the meteor was first detected over the Michigan town of Hope, traveled northeast, and disintegrated above Saginaw Bay. At its peak, NASA said, it was about 40 times brighter than Venus.
#MeteorSighting: A fireball was observed by witnesses in Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, Wisconsin, and the Canadian province of Ontario on the night of March 23. The meteor was first detected over the Michigan town of Hope. It traveled northeast and disintegrated above… pic.twitter.com/gBjMnCHfLT
— NASA Space Alerts (@NASASpaceAlerts) March 24, 2026
Ed Cackett, a physics and astronomy professor at Wayne State University, said the recent run of fireballs isn’t necessarily unusual.
“We think it’s from dust left over from a comet,” Cackett said. “So as a comet travels through the inner solar system, it leaves behind a trail of dust. As we pass through that debris cloud, some of that dust will end up entering our atmosphere. These things are typically between a grain of sand and the size of a softball. As they hit the atmosphere, they’re travelling 25,000 miles an hour or faster. Then, they very quickly get slowed down by the atmosphere and burn up.”
Cackett said most meteors do not survive the trip through the atmosphere, including the recent one spotted in Michigan.
If any pieces were to reach the ground, they would become meteorites.
“We get a sense of what the material was that made up our solar system by looking at meteorites,” Cackett said.
At the Wayne State Mineral Museum, Geology Mineral Museum Curator David Lowrie said meteorites are far older than the rocks people typically pick up on Earth.
“They’re 4.5 billion years old, and billion with a B,” Lowrie said.
Lowrie said even with increased interest after a fireball, actual meteorites are difficult to come by.
“Pretty uncommon,” Lowrie said. “There are lots of things that look like meteorites that people bring in to be identified, and I hate telling them that they’re not a meteorite.”
Even Lowrie hasn’t had luck finding one himself. “I keep hoping someday I’ll find one, but no such luck yet,” Lowrie said.
Public reports of meteors help researchers narrow down what happened and whether fragments could have fallen to Earth.
Cackett urged people who see one to report the information to the American Meteor Society.