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fireball seen streaking across Texas sky
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Strange Light In The Sky?
Aug 2, 2006 06:01 PM
It only lasted a few seconds. A bright light was seen streaking across the sky late Tuesday night, has lots of Central Texans talking.
In case you missed it, KXAN NBC Austin's Jim Bergamo shows us what it looked like and whether man or Mother Nature can take the credit.
The fireball that was seen streaking across the Texas sky Tuesday night was captured on a Lakeway PD dashcam.
As soon as the Central Texas skies lit up, the phone lines in the KXAN newsroom lit up as well. Inquisitive minds from the Hill Country to Buda wanted to know just one thing, 'What was it?'
"I thought something exploded," witness George Changos said.
George and Charla Changos of Buda were out by their pool shortly after 11 p.m. when they were caught off guard by bright, streaking light.
"It was just like mind blowing. Just the two flashes like it was going to rain, like it was lightning far away, then just a ball of fire going through the sky, and we both just sat there and went, 'Oh my gosh. Oh my gosh,'" Charla said.
Ed Cannon is an amateur astronomer, who showed us his chronograph, still set at 11:05:09 p.m., the exact time the light flashed across the sky.
"I knew it was fireball, a meteor fireball, but it gave me an adrenaline rush it was so bright," Cannon said.
Cannon is convinced it was a meteor fireball, and not space junk reentering the Earth's atmosphere -- even though a Web site that tracks orbiting space junk shows a Russian Cosmos booster passed over Central Texas at nearly the identical time.
"Normally a reentering space junk object would take a minute or two to cross a large portion of the sky, where as a natural fireballs are fast, four seconds, five, even ten seconds is probably a natural fireball," Cannon said.
It probably lasted only a few seconds, but witnesses say it was bright enough to light up the ground. Some saw the object split into pieces.
"I saw something very large and on fire that appeared to be headed straight for North Austin. It lit up the sky like lightning, and then it was gone."
- Matt, North Austin
"It literally lit up the night sky and had a long and bright orange tail. I thought something had 'exploded' in the night sky."
- George, Buda
"It literally lit up the side of my face and the cedar trees and the property. It looked like it was headed northwest and just split and lit up everything."
-- Patty, Hays County
There are some 11,000 objects orbiting in space close to Earth, and it's not unusual for space junk to orbit for years before burning up in the atmosphere.
Some might remember part of a Delta 2 rocket booster that landed on a Georgetown farm about 10 years ago.
[link to www.kxan.com]
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