(WZZM) - A large meteor sighting occurred over West Michigan late Wednesday evening.  Calls to the WZZM 13 Information Center started around 11:10 pm with the first report of a large 'fireball' near Rothbury in Oceana County.  Numerous viewers from Grant, Muskegon and Grand Rapids called in with similar information of a 'meteor' streaking across the sky from northwest to southeast.

National Weather Service offices across the Midwest reported the same siting from Des Moines and Davenport, Iowa outside of Kansas City, Missouri and in Portage, Milwaukee, Rock and Winnebago Counties in Wisconsin.

Steve Steenwyk, Professor of Physics and Astronomy at Calvin College says, "A meteor is any of these objects that might be made up of metal or rocky material that comes in to our atmosphere.  And we call them shooting stars.  Of course they aren't stars at all."

Steenwyk didn't get to see the spectacle himself, but did watch the video.  He says it was likely traveling up to 50,000 miles an hour.  "At that very high rate of speed, they carry a lot of kinetic energy and plow into the atmosphere.  They give up that energy in heat and that makes the atmosphere and energy glow."

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