Watch: Mysterious fireball flies through night sky from California to Texas. People say it was...
Mysterious fireball captured blazing through the night sky.
The night sky from California to Texas was lit up a little extraordinarily last week when a mysterious and slow-moving fireball traversed through it, leaving people puzzled about its identity.
In the camera footage, which has been obtained by NBC 7, the lit ball of fire was spotted slowly moving across the sky and leaving behind a trail through its bring trail outside of San Diego over the home of Rebecca Woods who lives in San Marco
“Our camera is facing south and the object flew from west to east,” said Woods, while speaking to NBC 7.
“I first thought it might be a Starlink launch because this is the exact trajectory I’ve seen in previous launches but there was nothing scheduled," she added.
There were 34 reports of a fireball submitted to the American Meteor Society on July 25 from California to Texas.
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The mysterious object's photos and videos on the website of the organisation show that a white ball is slowly blazing through the sky.
Professor and the department chair of San Diego State’s Astronomy Department Eric Sandquist said that it can be a Japanese space junk.
“The object appears to be the same one in this news story from Mexico. It is believed to be a Japanese booster rocket from a launch in 2010,” he said while speaking to NBC 7.
“There is a link on the page to a prediction that the rocket would de-orbit at about the time observed," he added.
The west-to-east trajectory of the fireball “supports the idea that it was an orbiting object that re-entered,” said Sandquist, emphasising that most launches go eastward to utilise the rotation of the Earth.
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He added that since the object was moving at a slow speed it is highly unlikely that it was a meteor which travels very fast.
Meanwhile, one user said, "Satellite burning up on re-entry." San Diego police said that the object was not part of Comic Con.
(With inputs from agencies)