BOISE, Idaho — Residents of Idaho shared some eye-catching videos of what appears to be a fireball streaking across the sky Tuesday night.
Viewers in Rexburg, Twin Falls and Cascade reported seeing the fiery objects around 10:10 p.m. MT, shining against the dark Gem State sky.
The American Meteor Society documented 47 reports of the "fireball" seen over Idaho, Montana, Oregon and Wyoming between 8:10 p.m. and 10:34 p.m. MT. Other Idaho residents reported the fiery streaks in McCall, Salmon, Stanley and Idaho Falls.
The object moved from west to east, with the American Meteor Society's trajectory line drawn from northwest of Salmon to the Ringling, Montana area.
Cortney DeMott captured a video of the incident from the Idaho Falls area. In a submission to AMS, DeMott said, "the cloudy train started very thin, and then left 3 peak like cloud looking formations which glowed very bright, followed by another thin train. This was visible until the sun fully set."
Jason Kiningham also shared a video from the Missoula, Montana area as the sky became light gray following sunset:
Jeff Williams' video shows the fiery object in the dark sky above Butte, Montana:
According to spaceweather.com, the flaming bits could have been from a man-made object and not a fireball.
"This may have been the fuel tank of an old Russian rocket. Shortly before the explosion over Montana, the U.S. Department of Defense Space Track website issued a Trajectory Impact Prediction (TIP) message for an object called "BREEZE-M DEB (TANK)." According to their alert, a Breeze-M fuel tank would fall into Earth's atmosphere on July 13th at 04:06 ± 52 minutes UT. That fits the timing of the Montana explosion.
Spaceweather.com said the fuel tank had been orbiting Earth for nearly 10 years as part of a rocket that launched Russia's Yamal 402 geostationary communications satellite in December of 2012.
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