Webster - A strange fireball spotted flying slowly over the Houston area raised a lot of questions after images and videos started popping up on social media. They were posted by a Webster man named Jordan Sterling. Sterling is used to the view from his balcony but he rarely see's anything but signs and wires. "I'm always looking in the sky to try to catch something out of the ordinary," Sterling explained. Early Sunday evening that changed. "I look up in the sky and just right there in the sky," Sterling says pointing to the horizon, "is a huge fireball with a giant fire tail on it just streaking across the sky!" He grabbed his camera then rolled for three minutes as the object crawled across the horizon. "At first I thought it was a meteor but it was moving way too slow. Meteors usually go a lot faster."

Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No, it's actually a fireball tearing across the night sky yesterday evening. This amazing photo was captured by Graham Harkness (You can view his great portfolio here) last night at about 10.30pm. Taking photos of the night sky in Dalkey, Harkness managed to capture this rare sight.

So what exactly is it?

Astronomy Ireland told TheJournal.ie, that Harkness managed to capture a rare photograph of a meteor burning up in the earth's atmosphere.

"It's definitely a fireball, it's difficult to catch a photo of it, he was very fortuitous," said David Moore of Astronomy Ireland.

By looking at sky maps, Moore estimated that the fireball in the photo is about 100 kilometres off the ground.

"It's towards the north east, unfortunately it wouldn't have made land fall in Ireland. Most likely, the drop zone could have been on the west coast of Britain, close to the border with Scotland. I would be surprised if there weren't reports on the west coast of Britain about it as it is rather bright," said Moore.

Knoxville - We had several calls to the WATE 6 On Your Side newsroom about a fireball spotted. Dr. Bill Cook with the Meteroid Environments Office said a meteor entered Earth's atmosphere Saturday night over Mississippi.

At 8:57 PM, an object about six inches in diameter and weighting fifteen pounds entered Earth's atmosphere southwest of Tupelo, Mississippi.

At its brightest, the fireball was as bright as the first quarter Moon. It was detected by three NASA meteor cameras at an altitude of 45 miles.

The meteor moved northeast at 54,000 miles per hour, finally burning up at an altitude of 15 miles.

The residents of Russia's Amur region woke up Sunday morning to notice an unusual celestial phenomenon - a shining object flying through the sky, leaving a white trail that some social media users compared to the Nike logo.

"[The trace of the alleged meteorite] looked like a trace of the plane, only bigger and much brighter," an eyewitness from the city of Belogorsk in the Amur region in Russia's Far East told the local Amur.info website. The swoosh was seen near one of the military units in the city.

• German scientists spotted the 2km (1.24mile) ring on a routine survey flight
• The scar of broken ice was found in Antarctica's King Baudoin Ice Shelf
• Scientists believe it was made by a 7-10 m wide meteorite that hit in 2004
• Researchers in Antarctica at the time reported seeing dust left in the sky
• They estimated it had exploded with the force of 12,000 tonnes of TNT
• Infrasound stations also picked up the explosion and matched the location

An enormous impact crater thought to have been created by a meteorite the size of a house smashing into Earth has been discovered in the Antarctic ice sheet.

Scientists conducting a routine aerial research flight above East Antarctica noticed a strange ring-like structure in the normally flat and featureless ice.

It appeared to be a series of broken 'icebergs' surrounded by a 2km (1.24 miles) wide circular scar, surrounded by a few other smaller circular scars in the ice.

A spate of mysterious booms that has been shaking central Oklahoma returned for a second day Friday, again rattling houses and frightening livestock.

Oklahoma Geological Survey research seismologist Austin Holland said a series of booms, much like a sonic boom, rattled the Norman area starting at 11:19 a.m. Friday. Numerous others had been reported Thursday in the same area at about the same time.

Friday's booms weren't "quite as frequent" as Thursday's, Holland said. "It's quite interesting."

The windows of Anthony Young's home in the town that's the outskirts of Oklahoma City rattled. "We thought some nut was out here, you know, with explosives," Young told KOCO-TV. "It sounded like thunder, you could feel the ground shake, but it was nothing like an earthquake"

Both Holland and National Weather Service meteorologist Matthew Day didn't have an explanation for the booms.

The crash and burn of a meteorite into the Earth atmosphere may have been seen and captured on different recordings in Romania last night at 3 AM, according to Romanian media. Many Romanians noticed a bright light, similar to day light, which lasted for several seconds during the night, and the unusual phenomena was captured on surveillance cameras, including on the Otopeni airport in Bucharest - videos below.

Internet users and bloggers reported they have seen something that may have been a meteorite disintegrating into the atmosphere, which resulted into the bright light. Some people who happened to be driving in Bucharest at the time of the incident reported the same phenomena.

It is yet uncertain where the meteorite may have fallen, but, according to ProTv, this could have happened somewhere around the counties of Buzau or Vrancea, where the intensity of the light, as seen on local surveillance cameras, was also the highest.

A mysterious glowing orb has been filmed breaking away from an unidentified meteorite-like object as it streaked across the sky above California.

The unusual object can be seen moving through the sky leaving a long tail behind that is characteristic of space debris or a meteorite burning up in the atmosphere. But after a few seconds a second round object separates from the main fireball and moves off in the opposite direction.

UFO hunters have claimed the bright orb may have been some sort of escape pod from a crashing ship. However, others have said it is more likely to have been a meteorite breaking apart in the atmosphere. There have been several sightings of meteorite fireballs in the US over the past week, with many reports coming from California. The past couple of days have also seen astronomers enjoying the peak of the annual Quadrantids meteor shower.

The fireball was spotted by Ken Roberts while he was driving home from work in southern California. He said: 'I was driving home after work when this UFO or whatever you call it caught my eye. 'I pulled over in front of somebody's house to film it. I would have got a better shot but I didn't want to jump these people's fence. 'Anyway I don't know what the hell to make of it. Couldn't have been a plane cause there was no noise. And I never heard a crash after either.

'The Orb thing flew straight up into the sky and disappeared.' He posted the video on YouTube on Monday evening but did not say when or where the footage had been filmed, other than the general area of California.

'I think it could be something re-entering and bits coming off it,' said Ben Biggs, editor of All About Space magazine. 'However, if it was a big spacecraft then we'd probably know about it. 'Could it be a meteorite? It's a bit slow to be one as they normally travel much faster through the atmosphere, although we are at the peak of the Quadrantids meteor shower.

Loud booms are actually usual on New Year's Eve. However, I think that all the rockets and fireworks have already exploded two or three days after! So what are these mysterious booms heard and felt across the US in the first days of 2015?

Yesterday, mystery booms have been reported across the US from Texas to North Carolina, California to Indiana and Georgia, so literally all over the country. Freaky, isn't it?

Lucy banks shared on the DSW Scanner's Facebook page: "Loud booms in Euless, Texas just now lots of them started off really loud and then got quieter." On the same thread Kim Walk Prazak reports another boom in Keller, Tx. Any ideas about their origin?

Jennifer Whitacker reports 2 loud booms again, the first was louder than the second in Indiana. Just remember that the New Madrid fault lies right under this state. Is the next big one around?

Early morning December 28, loud booms accompanied the break-up of a large asteroid/comet fragment into hundreds of meteors over Southern Brazil, over the states of Mato Grosso do Sul, Campo Grande, Paraná and even in Paraguay. People on the ground were startled, amazed and scared by the spectacular display.

Local media and 'experts' were quick to throw the 'space junk' hypothesis on the table to account for at least one of the sightings, as what looked like a charred or carbonized gas cylinder had been found in a field in Santa Rita do Pardo, about 300 km from Campo Grande. Two years ago another meteor fireball sighting in Brazil was also blamed on 'space junk', after the fact. What are the odds of TWO satellites or rocket boosters hitting Brazil - and catching all space and ground observation systems - completely off-guard, and in the space of two years?

Space junk may of course fall, yet it cannot account for the increasing numbers of actual cosmic bodies raining down on us these days. The usual 'space junk did it' explanation is an obvious reaction to cover up any possible threat or omen coming from without our globe, as well as a calming agent to a very deep-seated fear in the collective human psyche; the association of meteors and large-scale human suffering.

This spectacular meteor fireball sighting in Brazil in October 2014 was just that - a meteor fireball. Given that they're being filmed, photographed and seen all over the world, and on a daily basis, it's far more probable that the 'visitation' on December 28th over Southern Brazil was another large meteor fireball.