Watch CBS News

Meteorite From Wednesday's Fireball Found In Novato

NOVATO (CBS 5) -- Lisa Webber's house in Novato was unusually quiet Wednesday night because the Giants game was in a rain delay.Then the quiet was broken.

"I hear this bump, bump, bump, like something hit the roof. And I thought that's odd, I have no overhanging trees," Lisa told CBS 5 on Sunday.

Two days later Lisa read an article about the meteor that was seen across the Bay Area sky that night. She remembered the thump on her roof and decided to look around to see if a fragment of the meteor (technically a meteorite) had made the noise.

"I saw one thing and I thought, 'alright, if that's it, great. If not, I'm done.' And sure enough, that's what it was," she said.

Sure enough, Lisa found a small rock that Dr. Peter Jenniskens, with NASA's SETI institute, says is indeed a piece from the flaming fireball. He helped track the path of the meteor, capturing the image on an array of video cameras. He says this is only the twentieth meteorite with a known trajectory ever found.

KCBS' Chris Filippi Reports:

As Dr. Jenniskens told reporters at a news conference on Sunday, "this is a little souvenir of our past, a little photo album that tells us what happened at the time our solar system was born."

(Copyright 2012 by CBS San Francisco. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed)

View CBS News In
CBS News App Open
Chrome Safari Continue
Be the first to know
Get browser notifications for breaking news, live events, and exclusive reporting.