NASA: Pieces of asteroid fell along M-36 in Hamburg Township

Pieces of an asteroid from the fireball seen over southeast Michigan last night are believed to have landed in Livingston County, according a NASA official.

“If you look at the Township of Hamburg, there may be meteorites between Hamburg Township and Lakeland,” said Bill Cooke, lead for NASA meteoroid environment office at the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. “It’s about a two-mile stretch along state road M-36. It passes through both Hamburg and Lakeland. It’s pretty precise.”

Cooke said it was about 8:08 p.m. Eastern time last night when a piece of an asteroid approximately 2 yards across, weighing perhaps two tons, hit the Earth’s atmosphere at about 28,000 miles per hour. The “violent” breaking of the rock occurred about 20 miles from the surface, creating a fireball seen by thousands.

Using Doppler weather radar, Cooke said, the pieces of the asteroid were determined to be in the Hamburg/Lakeland area. The pieces would now be only a few ounces each at most. They will most likely look like charcoal as they are black fusion crust. They would not be smoking hot boulders or anything that left a crater, as is often portrayed in movies, he said.

Cooke cautions meteorite hunters that the rock pieces would belong to the owners of the property on which they fell.

The fragments may be worth some money, but how much would depend on the meteorite's composition, and pieces would need to be tested by a laboratory to make that determination.

More: Michigan meteor: What to do if you find a piece

Cooke said about 10 asteroids per year break apart over the United States, causing a meteor or fireball — the flashes of light seen.

What is unusual about this one, he said, is that it occurred in a densely populated area.

"The reason it is a big deal is because it occurred near a major city, Detroit," said Cooke. "A lot of people saw this."

Chad Chewning, Livingston County 911 director, said the dispatch center fielded between 20 to 25 emergency calls in the county from people regarding the meteor sighting.

"They were reporting unknown flashes or explosions," said Chewning, who was at home and saw a white flash. "It only generated two fire calls that were unfounded. We have never experienced anything like this from dispatch with a meteor or anything space related since I have been here."

Danielle Price, an administrative assistant for Hamburg Township Police, said the station had received no calls about the meteor. She saw the flash, and her house shook in Commerce Township. She thought it might have been a blown transformer.

More: Michigan meteor: Here's everything we know

Kendra Mueller, a Pinckney resident, initially thought that was what she saw when driving home from work on M-36 last night.

She had just passed Hinchey Road before Pingree when, she said, "a light blue light lit up everything like daylight."

"It was crazy, and then I heard a boom," said Mueller. "I thought it was a transformer, but I looked around and everybody had power. I thought, 'What in the world was that?' It scared me."

Her next thought was lightning, but she could see the stars. She pulled into her driveway and sat there for a minute and then got on the internet, where she saw people making comments about aliens. She recounted it laughing.

She has no plans to hunt for asteroid rock fragments but said she might keep an eye out in her own backyard.

Kurt Melvin missed seeing the fireball because he was watching “Big Bang Theory" but heard and felt it shake his home in Fowlerville.

The 30-year member of the Capital Area Astronomy Association initially thought it was an earthquake or thunder or maybe even his cat knocking something down upstairs.

He speculated that fragments of the asteroid could be anything from micro-sized to a few inches in diameter.

Melvin said he recently finished making the largest telescope made in Michigan, similar in size to ones at the Michigan State University and University of Michigan observatories, with a 24-inch diameter mirror and 10-and-a-half foot long tube assembly, and weight of about 850 pounds. He hopes to build a pole barn to house the telescope and open it to public, eventually establishing the first observatory in the county.

For now, perhaps area residents can count their lucky stars that the asteroid wasn’t larger.

“We were lucky,” said Melvin, who referred to the 2013 meteor strike in the Russian city of Chelyabinsk, which injured hundreds of people, the majority suffering wounds from shattering glass. “The one over Russia was the size of a bus and was pretty big and caused quite a bit of damage. A terminal burst can create quite a shockwave.”

Contact Susan Bromley at sbromley@livingstondaily.com or follow on Twitter at @SusanBromley10.