A local NASA-affiliated scientist announced Sunday that a golf ball-sized meteorite had been recovered in Novato days after a massive fireball was seen over the Bay Area.

Peter Jenniskens, principal investigator for NASA’s CAMS Project (Cameras for Allsky Meteor Surveillance), told reporters Sunday morning that Novato homeowner Lisa Webber had discovered a 63-gram meteorite in her yard the day before that was believed to have broken off from a car-size meteor that crashed into earth Wednesday night.

Webber, an administrative nurse at UCSF Medical Center, said that on the night the meteor crashed, she had heard what she thought was a rock hit her roof and roll off.

After reading an article about the meteor and how images obtained by Jenniskens showed that it appeared to fall over Novato (not Martinez, as previously reported), Webber went looking for the “rock” that hit her house, finding it just sitting in her yard.

She then contacted Jenniskens, who made arrangements to obtain the meteorite and examine it.

"I wasn't sure at first", said Jenniskens in an article posted on the CAMS project website. "The meteorite looks very unusual, because much of the fusion crust had come off."

During his investigation, Jenniskens also discovered a small dent in the Webber’s roof that “was consistent with the meteorite having hit the roof from a SW direction.”

Jenniskens described the meteorite as being dense and appearing to be “breccia,” or rock composed of tiny fragments of other rocks and minerals. He also said that it responded to magnets.

The meteor was witnessed streaking across the sky around 8 p.m. Wednesday evening by residents all over the Bay Area, from as far away as Santa Cruz.

Many described it as being a bright fireball with hues of red and orange, and that it was accompanied by a loud boom.

The sound was so loud, some residents reported it shook their homes, making them think it may be an earthquake.

“I wasn't sure what it was at first. It was pretty awesome seen it come down and the color change,” wrote Pranell Singh on the KTVU Facebook page after seeing the meteor while in Oakland.

Jonathan Braidman, astronomy instructor at Oakland's Chabot Space and Science Center, told KTVU that the meteor was roughly the size of a car when it broke up over the Bay Area.

Jenniskens’ says that the meteor was a fallen asteroid from the area between Mars and Jupiter known as the "Asteroid Belt."

Using surveillance video footage from two different sources – from a camera at San Mateo College and a CAMS project video camera in Sunnyvale – Jenniskens’ determined that the meteor entered the atmosphere at a speed of 14 km/s, which he said was typical but on the slow side of past meteorites, and that there was a good chance that a large portion of the asteroid survived the fall.