What is thought to have been a bright meteor, streaking across the predawn Northern Colorado sky Thursday, sparked reports from dozens of early birds who happened to view it.
Loveland resident Shawn Kraft caught it as he drove northward on U.S. 287, between Owl Canyon and Livermore, on his daily commute to Laramie where he works for the city as an information technologist.
"Here's what I could equate it with," Kraft said. "You know those little sparklers that kids waved around before they were illegal? It was like that. Green. Bright green. Really bright green, in a pitch-black sky. It took about a second or a second and a half."
The "fireball log" maintained by the American Meteor Society, an online gathering spot for amateur observers, contained nearly simultaneous reports of the same sighting -- a bright green meteor seen between 5:46 and 5:50 a.m.
The reports came from Colorado, Wyoming and Montana.
"It was good-sized," Kraft said. "It's the biggest thing I've ever seen in the sky like that."
A meteor is the name given to the light emitted by a meteoroid, a small rocky object that enters the earth's atmosphere from space, as it burns in the upper atmosphere.
A rare meteorite is a surviving fragment of a meteoroid that impacts the earth's surface. The vast majority of meteoroids vaporize in the atmosphere.
Comment: Alien, perhaps - but not the typically thought kind. Elsewhere on the Big Blue Marble there have been almost daily reports of loud booms as well as 'earthquakes' and meteorite explosions. This is just a small sample from the end of last year:
Thousands report loud boom and unusual sounds in Northeastern US: USGS classifies it as earthquake, but was it really an overhead meteor explosion?
Meteor explodes above Devon, England, blast wave blows open police station doors, tremors felt across wide area
Fragmentation and Sonics! Northern California Fireball Meteor +19'42 PDT 17OCT2012 - Unrelated to the Orionids
Slow-moving blue-orange fireball reported over Lincolnshire, England
Meteor with a long gold tail blazes across Alberta, Canada, 15 October 2012
Large bright fireball with orange-green tail breaks apart over Queensland, Australia, 29 August 2012
Something wicked this way comes? Read the following articles to learn more about the immediate cosmic threat:
Reign of Fire: Meteorites, Wildfires, Planetary Chaos and the Sixth Extinction
Meteorite Impacts Earth in Minden, Louisiana - Media and Government Cover It Up
Incoming! Meteor or Comet Fragment Explodes Above Southwestern US, Prompting US Army 'Missiles' Cover-up
Fireball explodes over Russian city: Widespread panic and structural damage, Thousand people injured