A fireball captured in a Youtube video on Wednesday night.
Someday, I am going to have a video camera ready with spare batteries when something like this happens.
Until then, please enjoy this short Youtube clip of something I wish all of us could have witnessed ourselves:
Before you all say that this must be a hoax, NASA officials have confirmed what many witnesses have seen: It's a fireball from a piece of asteroid that entered Earth's atmosphere... likely.
According to the Associated Press, witnesses from southern California to Arizona the light hurtle quickly from west to east at around 9:45 p.m. Oklahoma time Wednesday. Many apparently described the light as bluish-green or yellow and orange.
Don Yeomans, who heads NASA's Near-Earth Object Program, said he was convinced it was a fireball — a fragment of an asteroid the size of a baseball or basketball that hit the atmosphere and disintegrated before reaching the ground.
This natural phenomenon tends to happen on a weekly basis, but usually occurs over the ocean where no one can see.
"It's unusual for an object of this size to be seen over populated areas," Yeomans said.
So what caused the color? Yeomans told the AP that the bluish-green color suggests the object had some magnesium or nickel in it. Orange is usually an indication it's entering the atmosphere at several miles per second, a moderate rate of speed.
"It's one of Mother Nature's better light shows," Yeomans said. Understatement of the year!
However, this is likely not a UFO. Yeomans ruled out a dead spacecraft falling back to Earth because such events can be predicted ahead of time. Federal Aviation Administration spokesman Ian Gregor confirmed that there were no aircraft incidents reported in the western region.
Does it really surprise anyone that during these severe, extreme and exceptional drought conditions that the sky would be raining fire instead of water? Well, if we can't have fireballs from Oklahoma's skies, at least we got a measurable amount of rain Friday.
--Althea Peterson
