This is a link I stumbled upon. http://www.cnn.com/2016/07/28/health/mystery-light-sky/index.html Was looking to paste it in an existing thread. Someone should twitter: the cow jumped over the moon.
It flew right over me here in California, but unfortunately I wasn't looking out the window and didn't notice it. From the photos, it looks like something entering the atmosphere and burning up. A large meteor or a bolide. I've seen them before and they can be pretty spectacular. It was traveling on a very flat trajectory, almost parallel to the earth's surface, which makes me suspect a satellite or other space-junk in a decaying orbit. But reports seem to have it traveling from east to west and I'd expect a re-entering satellite to be moving west to east. So I'm guessing it was space-junk of the more natural sort: a large rock. (Sorry, MR.)
Jonathan McDowell, publisher of the always amazing Jonathan's Space Report, has told the media that it was the second stage booster of a Chinese Chang Zheng (Long March) 7 rocket that had launched a unmanned prototype of a new crew capsule and five smaller satellites into orbit on June 25 from Wenchang. Apparently the booster went into orbit itself and then quickly decayed. http://www.space.com/33581-amazing-fireball-from-chinese-rocket-space-junk-video.html Jonathan's Space Report is here (the best source available of details on space launches and space vehicle activities around the solar system): http://www.planet4589.org/space/jsr/jsr.html The June 25 launch is recorded here: http://planet4589.org/space/jsr/latest.html
The USAF's Space Command (which tracks some 16,000 objects in orbit) has verified the Chinese booster account. http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-streak-light-20160727-snap-story.html Apparently it was travelling west to east and reentered over California later showing up over Nevada and Utah. At its brightest it was about 50 miles up where it was incandescent and fragmenting. It's possible that small bits of it made it to earth.
Just a question... Is there a serious but objective UFO site in the Internet? I am assuming not here...go tell...as people are making Billions of Dollars on UFO matters every year...thank you.
