About 11:00AM this morning while walking my dog in the Austin area I saw a fireball with a long flaming tail shoot through the sky and come down somewhere around Georgetown. For a moment I thought I was in a Michael Bay movie, but it turns out others saw it as well. While officials at first thought it was a crashing plane, the current theory is that it is debris from the satellite crash that happened a couple of days ago: Reports of falling debris investigated
How wild is that? Certainly the oddest thing I have ever seen in the sky.
I hope more video and stills will be forthcoming. That was a pretty impressive entry.
I happened to be facing the right direction sitting around a campfire outside Burnet (also near Austin) late last year to witness the brightest and longest lasting meteor of my life. I kinda doubt I’ll ever see another as spectacular.
I would tend to agree with his assessment. It seems unlikely that a satellite would have sufficient mass to survive the reentry and create a visible fireball impacting the earth. This thing was visible from Austin to Dallas in broad daylight so it must have been fairly large.
My first instinct when seeing the flaming streak was that it was a meteorite. The news sources and unnamed officials are pushing other explanations. Is there some reason why this could not have been a meteorite?
I have certainly seen my share of “shooting stars” in the night skies. What made this event unique was that it happened during daylight, was quite visibly a flaming mass, and it HIT THE GROUND. If you see that on a monthly basis you are lucky indeed.
About a month ago I was walking the dog and saw a meteor… waited to see if there would be any more, and about ten seconds later, saw another with the exact same trajectory.