Mystery fire in the sky

[JudynTX]

http://www.news8austin.com/shared/video/video_pop.asp?destlist=62169

News 8 photojournalist Eddie Garcia captured the fiery debris fall from the sky.

[johnsmith.]

Bigfoot/911 forum.

[JudynTX]

Bigfoot/911 forum.

Link? :lol

[SpursStalker]

I understand it was a metor?

[JudynTX]

What's a metor?

[TwAnKiEs]

I knew Transformers are real! :hat

[SpursStalker]

What's a metor?

The mispelled version of ...

meteor

:rolleyes

[Taco]

http://www.mysanantonio.com/news/local_news/Pleas_for_the_heavens_to_open_went_astray.html

Web Posted: 02/17/2009 12:00 CST
Fireball in sky likely not man-made
By Cindy Tumiel - Express-News
An astronomical detective game was under way Monday to sleuth out the identity of the bright flaming object that streaked across the Texas sky Sunday morning, setting off a sonic boom in North Texas and igniting a flurry of reports to law enforcement agencies across the state.

The consensus among astronomers was that the object most likely was a meteor, one of perhaps a thousand that penetrate the Earth's atmosphere each year and burn to dust by the time they reach the ground.

Most meteors are small and streak across the sky unnoticed, above an ocean or a remote area. This one was bigger, and just happened to make a grand entrance in broad daylight while millions of Texans between Austin and the Oklahoma border were heading for church services or enjoying weekend leisure activities under pretty blue skies.

An Austin videographer captured the falling object while he was taping a race for television, and the video quickly made its way to news channels around the nation.

Initial speculation was that it was debris from the collision of two satellites above Siberia last week, but the Federal Aviation Administration discounted that possibility, despite the fact that it had warned pilots Saturday to be on the lookout for falling space debris.

Ron DiIulio, director of astronomy at the University of North Texas in Denton, didn't see the fall but heard the boom as the object punctured the stratosphere about 30 miles above the Earth's surface. His analysis from televised video and witness sightings is that the object was a rocky, carbonaceous chondrite meteor, about the size of a flying pickup.

“This was like a hunk of really bad concrete that fell,” DiIulio said. “We can say reliably that this was a natural phenomenon, and a pretty darn exciting one.”

The object wasn't visible in San Antonio, but that didn't prevent buzz among local sky watchers. Bryan Snow, coordinator of Scobee Planetarium at San Antonio College, spent the day scanning the Internet for reports and noted that a smaller meteor with metal content could have produced the same visual effect as it ignited and burned in the heated atmosphere.

“If you had a meteor of nickel and iron falling, a football- or even baseball-sized object would be big enough to see,” he said. “It is not an uncommon event.”

One thing is virtually certain, though, astronomers said. Don't expect to find smoldering, rocky embers in a backyard or cow pasture.

“Almost never can you trace them all the way to the ground,” said Anita Cochran, assistant director of the McDonald Observatory in the Davis Mountains of West Texas.

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