An official at NASA in Huntsville has confirmed that the bright lights and loud booms seen and heard south of Birmingham and across Alabama and at least two other states tonight were caused by a meteor -- one that was very bright and passed unusually close to the earth's surface.

"It was a meteor, a fireball, and a very bright one," said Bill Cooke, head of the Meteoroid Environments Office at the Marshall Space Flight Center.

The meteor appeared at 8:18 p.m. local time, according to Cooke. "It hit the top of the atmosphere going about 73,000 mph," he said.

"We tracked it down to the altitude of 25 miles, which is very low for a meteor," he said

Cooke said that the size of the object was somewhere between that of a baseball or bowling ball. In order to make a final determination as to the size, he said further detailed analysis will be necessary.

Cooke said that he did not see the meteor but that his office has four meteor cameras to track such events.

The term "fireball" is the correct one to describe this object, according to Cooke.

"A fireball is bright meteor, a meteor brighter than the planet Venus," he said. "This one looks like it was as bright as the moon was tonight."

Updated at 8 a.m. Tuesday with video from the Marshall Space Flight Center.