This image made from dashcam video shows a brightly lit object falling from the sky above a highway in the southern Michigan skyline late Tuesday A suspected meteor turned up high above Michigan.

A suspected meteor that burned up high above Michigan on Tuesday night was seen by people as far away as Butler County.

Hundreds of people in the Detroit area reported seeing a fireball in the sky around 8:30 p.m. followed by a rumbling of thunder that registered as a 2.0 magnitude earthquake.

The American Meteor Society received reports from Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Ontario, Canada.

Butler native Mike Guentner, who has lived in the Detroit area for the last three years, said he was outside shoveling snow Tuesday night and saw a flash in the sky.

Guentner said Wednesday that his back was turned to the meteor, but he turned around in time to see it.

“I could see the sky slowly getting brighter and bright and brighter. It happened so quickly it was just a flash of fire in the sky and as soon as it appeared it disappeared,” he said.

About two minutes later, Guentner said, he heard a loud boom similar to thunder.

Guentner said his first thought was that it could have been a plane crash, but he decided it was more likely a rock from space before checking social media to see if others had seen the flash.

“It was kind of surreal. It was one of those things a lot of people don't experience in their lifetime,” Guentner said.

About 200 miles away, some in Western Pennsylvania, including Kris Smith of Butler Township, saw an especially bright shooting star.

Smith said he witnessed the meteor while sitting in his car, facing west, at the McDonalds drive through at Butler Crossing.

“The fireball appeared from 12 to 6 o'clock straight down toward the horizon. It was pretty brilliant. It had a green tinge to it,” Smith said.

He took to social media to see if any other county residents had seen it, but did not hear from anyone.

“Anytime you can see a celestial event it's kind of neat,” Smith said. “People across the country all saw the same thing, it makes everybody feel connected in a way.”

Steve Bicehouse, director of Butler County Emergency Services, said no one in the county called 911 to report lights in the sky Tuesday.

Chunks of rock and debris in space are called meteoroids, according to NASA's website. Meteoroids become meteors, or shooting stars, when they fall into a planet's atmosphere. The friction of the atmosphere usually causes them to heat up and disintegrate. Meteor pieces that survive the journey and hit the ground are called meteorites.

Butler County residents have seen a couple large meteors burn up high in the atmosphere in the past. In 1938 a meteor, believed to be 500 tons, was seen high above Chicora. Two pieces were found the day after it landed and two more pieces were found two years later.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.