Skywatchers across the mid-Atlantic region of the East Coast reported seeing a fireball streak across the sky last Thursday (July 17) sometime between 9:45 and 10:45 PM.

95 people reported the fireball to the American Meteorological Society, and the awesome scene was captured on film by a North Carolina man’s dashboard camera.

Dan Perjar’s dashboard camera filmed the object falling across the sky at 10:17 p.m. Thursday, as Perjar was traveling on Interstate 440 from Cary toward N.C. State University.

“When it first appeared, it honestly looked like someone had shot some fireworks off in their backyard – it was that stunning,” Perjar said. “It streaked with a definite green and gold color as it broke up in its descent – the camera didn’t capture the color very well.”

There has been much speculation about what the object ablaze could be. Although space debris has been conjectured, CalSky, a celestial calendar that denotes events of importance (such as falling space debris), did not have any events scheduled for that night.

There is a NASA facility located on Virginia’s Eastern Shore, and due to the amount of observers located in Virginia, it is possible that the object originated from the Wallops Flight Facility during a launch. However, like CalSky, NASA had no launches or missions publicly scheduled for that evening.

This has led scientists to believe the object was most likely a meteor. Tony Rice, a solar system ambassador for NASA, told the NewsObserver there won’t be confirmation of what the object is unless debris is found and analyzed.

“These types of objects are typically a small rock. Don’t think boulder, think pebble,” said Rice. “Thousands enter the atmosphere all the time, mostly over the water. Generally, a person is only going to have an opportunity to see a fireball/meteor two to three times in [their] lifetime.”

Initial calculations indicate the object would have landed in the region of Surry, Virginia. However, Rice believes any meteoric material was consumed by the fireball itself, and therefore there will be nothing to recover and analyze.

“It’s travelling at 35,000-plus mph, and it just burns the outside of the meteor away,” said Rice.