A science museum in Georgia is studying a piece of a meteor that blazed over the Southeast last week and was later recovered by a local meteorite hunter. The 3-foot meteor splintered in the air in broad daylight, littering Newton County — about 40 miles southeast of Atlanta — with fragments scattered around the area.

Arizona meteor hunter Robert Ward collected fragments of a meteorite in Georgia, including a 73.2-gram piece, adding to his private museum collection.

Remnants of a cosmic 'fireball' object witnessed soaring across Georgia may have broken off and plummeted through the roof of a home south of Atlanta.

The flash in the Georgia sky in June, described by witnesses as a fireball, traveled hundreds of millions of miles through space before entering the Earth’s atmosphere, eventually crashing into a home. “This one went through a house in McDonough, an the whole mass, we estimate, was probably like the size of a large cherry tomato,” Harris said.

The American Meteor Society has received 100 reports of fireball sightings from across Georgia, North and South Carolina, and Tennessee. Most of the reports are in Georgia, according to its website.

The ‘scary’ fireball that witnesses saw shooting across the sky in several U.S. states on June 26 has been identified. NASA confirmed to PEOPLE that the moving object was a meteor caused by a small space rock burning up after entering Earth’s atmosphere.

It blasted into Earth’s atmosphere 27 miles above Georgia and was found by a meteorite hunter in Henry County.

A hunk of "space junk" from a blazing meteor that streaked across the Southeast's daytime sky this week -- triggering panic below -- may have smashed into a Georgia home, officials said.