©WBIR
Meteor photographed over Tennessee in January 2007

Numerous East Tennesseans reported seeing a bright green light streak through the sky Wednesday night. Police dispatchers said they got so many calls, they didn't have time to count them.

Reports on its direction of travel varied somewhat. Most accounts on its shape and color reported it being blue-green with a comet-like tail, and many callers to WBIR were surprised by the size of it.

WBIR's own Steve Phillips saw the light as he returned from dinner and said it was larger than he expected a meteor to be.

Professor Paul Lewis didn't see the event himself, but from people's description, he expects it was a meteor.

"It's entirely possible that it could be a piece of space debris," he said. "Or, as I suspect, it's probably a piece of junk out of some asteroid belt, a rocky meteor, for instance."

Lewis went on to explain that if it were a meteor, it was likely alone. East Tennessee won't see another meteor shower until April 22nd. He added that the only way to know with absolute certainty what the object was would be if NORAD had been tracking it.