Bill Cooke, head of NASA's Meteoroid Environment Office, initially reported the sighting was a brilliant fireball from a meteor burning up as it entered the Earth's atmosphere. Later, he bowed to other expert's opinion that it was a jet contrail reflecting the glow of the setting sun - apparently based on erroneous footage (of an actual contrail) aired by a local TV station.
This week, though, the sightings were officially reinstated as, in fact, a rare fireball - at least one yard across - bright enough to be seen during daylight.
A fireball is a meteor larger and brighter than normal. The American Meteor Society offers more background:
Fireballs occur every day over all parts of the Earth. It is rare though for an individual to see more than one or two per lifetime as they can also occur during the day (when the blinding sun can obscure them), or on a cloudy night, or over the ocean where there is no one to witness them. Observing during one of the major annual meteor showers can increase your chance of seeing another bright meteor.
Comment: Nothing to see here folks! Fireballs are seen all over the world, every day, always have been, always will be! No doubt when one of them causes serious damage in an urban area, these same 'authorities on fireballs' will tell us that it happens all the time, the city that got hit was 'just unlucky'...
This reshaping of the past to fit the facts of the present is typical of a scientific mindset so hopelessly bound to the extremist uniformitarian worldview.
Uniformitarianism is the assumption that the same natural laws and processes that operate in the universe now, have always operated in the universe in the past and apply everywhere in the universe.
~ Wikipedia
"Oceania was at war with Eurasia; therefore Oceania had always been at war with Eurasia."
~ George Orwell, 1984
Only two daylight fireballs are sighted per year on average. Coincidently or otherwise, on the same day as the San Antonio fireball, the average was tied by a daytime fireball observed over New Zealand.
Comment: Uhm, say what?!
For unknown reasons, fireballs visible in the night sky (at least as brilliant as Venus) occur most frequently from February through the spring. To date, at least 10 nighttime fireballs have been confirmed over the U.S. this year.
Comment: ...first NASA called them "February fireballs", now it's "occur most frequently from February through the spring"... watch them extend that to 'February through the summer'...
Here's a video of one captured from University of Wisconsin-Madison on the roof of the Atmospheric, Oceanic & Space Sciences Building on Wednesday around 8:20 p.m. central time.
The American Meteor Society said it received nearly 40 reports of the above fireball from several Midwestern states.
Reports of many different colors have been received, with blue and green being most mentioned. The average brightness reported by witnesses was near the light produced by a half-illuminated moon.
This fireball streaked above the skies of the Windy City. WLS 890AM Chicago reported: "The meteor that blazed across the sky in the Chicago area Wednesday night was probably about the size of a basketball and moving about 36,000 mph."
The last time a fireball was spotted in the Chicago skies was March 2003 WLS said.
Could be space wreckage burning up in the atmosphere. For at least the past ten years I have observed in the night time skies, activity that can only be described as a aerial battle, complete with bright flashes and points of light flying in formation.
We have all seen (most of us anyway) the flyover's of earth based spacecraft since the sixties. Those are the points of light that look like stars that move in a straight line across the sky overhead. If you look at that same area of sky for long enough, you can see the same craft making another orbit, this usually takes about 90 minutes.
But lately, we have been witnessing not only formation flying, but sharp turns at what can be only very high speeds at great altitudes above our heads. No navigation lights and no engine sounds.
One of the most remarkable sightings happened in the atmosphere and involved a U.S. Military aircraft. It was right at dusk on a late winter day and a small group of us where outside enjoying an unseasonably warm evening. We had a barbecue going and I was busily flipping steaks, engaged in conversation with some friends. In the background I heard what sounded like the approach of a military jet. I didn't pay much attention to it since we were accustomed to military aircraft flyovers on occasion in our rural neighborhood. As the sound of the jet approached, one of the younger guests became quite excited and said "wow, look at that"! I turned around and looked up in the general direction of the aircraft and noted that the jet was about 3,000 feet above the deck. About a quarter mile in front of the jet was an intense blue light, moving silently, at the same speed as the jet. When this strange sight was almost directly overhead, the UFO made a 160 degree turn and accelerated. It was over the horizon in about 2-3 seconds. The jet banked left in hot pursuit but his turning radius was at least a couple miles wide and it sounded as if his turbines were thrusting at their maximum. It took him a good half a minute or better to cover the same distance or at least until we could no longer hear his jet.
I have witnessed 2 day time fireballs in the last six years and many more than that at night, a couple even complete with sonic booms. So whatever these fire balls are, they are something much larger than your average meteor.