Mystery in Texas skies - What was it?

[cycloneye]

I say it was debris from Satellites but authorities dont know yet.



Mystery object falls in Texas

What looked like a fireball streaked across the Texas sky on Sunday morning, leading many people to call authorities to report seeing falling debris.

"We don't know what it was," said Federal Aviation Administration spokesman Roland Herwig.

The Williamson County Sheriff's Office used a helicopter to search after callers said they thought they saw a plane crashing, a spokesman said.

"We don't doubt what people saw" but authorities found nothing, said spokesman John Foster.

The U.S. Strategic Command said there was no connection to the sightings over Texas and Tuesday's collision of satellites from the U.S. and Russia.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,493344,00.html

[brunota2003]

It's a bird, it's a plane, no wait...it was a meteor according to authorities.

[AirNik]

That picture reminds me a lot of the debris that fell when the space shuttle exploded a few years ago.

[cycloneye]

Video of object falling.

http://edition.cnn.com/video/#/video/us ... reball.cnn

[RL3AO]

It was a meteor. It was moving too fast to be anything else.

[HurricaneBill]

It was a weather balloon.

[somethingfunny]

It's always a weather balloon.

[vbhoutex]

It was a meteor about the size of a pick up truck according to the news media in Texas.

[cycloneye]

It was a Meteor

DALLAS – The fireball that streaked across the sky and alarmed numerous Texas residents was likely just a big meteor and not wreckage from colliding satellites, experts said Monday.

Federal Aviation Administration spokesman Roland Herwig said the fireball seen across a wide stretch of the state Sunday morning probably was a natural phenomenon and not debris from last week's collision between an Iridium communications satellite and a Russian military space vehicle.

And Preston Starr, observatory manager at the University of North Texas, said it probably was a meteor about the size of a pickup truck with the consistency of a chunk of concrete.

The Williamson County sheriff's office in central Texas said it received so many emergency calls about the light in the sky that it sent deputies out in a helicopter to look for a plane crash.

The FAA had said during the weekend that the fireball possibly was caused by falling debris from the satellites. It also posted a weekend warning telling pilots to watch out for satellite debris but rescinded the warning Sunday, Herwig said.

Starr said the object's trajectory was wrong for it to have been satellite debris. And he said such objects would be too small and moving too slowly to produce a flare so widely visible during the day.

"It would have looked like a blip, and nobody would be able to notice if it were a daytime entry," Starr said.

Starr said objects as large as his estimate for the one spotted Sunday enter the atmosphere about eight or 10 times a year. It was probably moving between 15,000 and 40,000 mph, he said.

Despite its initial large size, if any of the object survived the fiery descent through the atmosphere, it would be smaller than a fist, he said.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/falling_debris

[brunota2003]

WOOO...I win! not really, but

[TexasStooge]

It's definitely a meteor.

[JenBayles]

I've seen a couple of huge bolides in my life and they are nothing short of spectacular. My husband and I saw the best one several years ago returning to Houston from Wimberley. Out in the middle of nowhere late at night on I-10, half-hypnotized on the road and BAM! This huge, multi-colored fireball streaks across the sky from north to south seeming to blow up on the southern horizon. I don't know if we hallucinated the sound because of the intense light, but it seemed to rumble as it went by. I'll never forget it.