A burning trail lit up the sky over Western Australia for 20 minutes after an object suspected to be a meteorite plunged into the sea, leaving a burning orange trail that mesmerised local residents.

Beachgoers in Perth debated what could have caused the strange burning line in the sky, which persisted for 20 minutes. Most meteorite trails are only seen briefly - and seeing an object plunge into the sea is rare.

Local resident Gavin Trought captured a picture of the 'burning streak', saying, 'The weird streak in the sky seen from Cottesloe last night. I noticed it just before sunset.'

Meteorites are fragments of rock that land on Earth's surface. Those that burn up - 'ablate' - in Earth's atmosphere are referred to as meteors. Seeing such clear, fiery trails is rare.

Perth journalist Pip Moir posted a photo she took at Cottesloe Beach to Twitter shortly after 6pm as puzzled onlookers debated what caused the colourful phenomena.

Daniel Jongue, manager at Perth's The Naked Fig Cafe, said he saw 'something on the horizon'' just before sunset.

Jonque said that the fiery trail lasted for around 20 minutes.

Firefighters in Colorado have battled the odds in trying to contain a blaze that has burned uncontrolled across 100 square miles of forest -- encountering precarious winds, heat and fatigue.

On Wednesday, they contended with a new force: meteors.

Authorities grounded firefighting aircraft as a precautionary measure after several reported meteor sightings near the High Park fire area they were trying to contain.

Chaffee County Sheriff W. Peter Palmer told the Los Angeles Times that his office received four reports of meteors striking the ground.

"People heard a boom; they saw things flying through the air, things like that," he said. "The local fire chief went looking for smoke to see if the impacts started another fire. That's the last thing we need."

Steve Segin, a spokesman for the U.S. Forest Service, told the Associated Press that the crew of a heavy air tanker spotted something while making a slurry run on the blaze. "They weren't sure what it was," he said.

The sunset off the WA coast looked extra spectacular Friday as an object believed to be a meteor made a stunning view. A long yellow orange fiery trail is seen over the horizon over Cottlesloe, and photos of the sight immediately spread on Twitter.

However, it has not been confirmed whether the blazing display of colourful light was indeed a meteor plunge. PertNow reported it tried to reach Perth Observatory and Astronomy WA, but it "could not be reached for comment."

"The weird streak in the sky as seen from Cottesloe last night. I noticed it just before sunset," media reader Gavin Trought told PertNow in a photo caption.

"It looked like vapour. It was red, orange and yellow and quite beautiful,'' said Daniel Jongue, a manager at The Naked Fig Cafe.

Some readers who also saw the still mysterious phenomenon have commented on the PerthNow report.

"I live in the hills and was coming down about 5.45pm. I looked to the horizon and was amazed at what I saw. Not the same as this but pink in colour and going down in a straighter line than this picture. But still not something you would see normally," said reader blond61.

West Monroe resident Obie Sims said he was enjoying a relaxing evening outdoors Thursday when he saw what appeared to be a huge bottle rocket streak across the sky about 10:45 p.m.

About a minute later, Sims said he heard a loud boom and his windows shook.

"I thought it was someone shooting fireworks," he said. "I must have just seen the tail of it and then it fizzled away."

Don Wheeler, an associate professor of natural science at Louisiana Delta Community College, said the occurrence was likely what is referred to as a "fireball", a small meteor that enters the atmosphere.

Wheeler said it is not unusual for meteors to enter the atmosphere, but the size makes fireballs more noticeable.

"It was likely the size of anywhere from a grapefruit to a basketball," he said. "Most often they are about the size of a key or even a grain of sand."

According to Wheeler, the larger size carries it deeper into the atmosphere and the speed of its journey often triggers a sonic boom.

This fiery streak in the sky amazed Perth beachgoers at sunset as a suspected meteor plunged into the ocean off the WA coast.

Pip Moir posted this photo she took at Cottesloe Beach to Twitter shortly after 6pm as puzzled onlookers debated what caused the colourful phenomena.

A spokesman for the Bureau of Meteorology said the weather bureau's radar would not pick up a fast moving object like a meteor.

Daniel Jongue, manager at The Naked Fig Cafe, said he noticed ''something on the horizon'' just before sunset. He said the fiery trail took about 20 minutes to dissipate.

''It looked like vapour. It was red, orange and yellow and quite beautiful,'' he said.

Perth Observatory and Astronomy WA could not be reached for comment last night.

Unidentified flying objects have been reported over Gloucester, re-igniting fresh theories on alien life.

Several reports have been made to police and astronomy websites flagging up the unusual sightings over Gloucester and Cheltenham on Friday, June 15, at around 11.30pm.

Carl Sumners, 23, who spent six years in the Royal Navy and had three tours in Afghanistan with the Commando Helicopter Force, told us what he saw over his house in Roman Road, Gloucester.

He feared the turquoise object was a meteorite heading for a populated area, so called the police.

"It was the size of a wheelbarrow, 2,000ft in the sky and travelling faster than a fighter jet," he said.

"It seemed to be on fire as it had an orange tail behind it. There must be some kind of logical explanation, maybe it was a meteor. It definitely wasn't a Chinese lantern or weather balloon."

A dazzling daytime fireball zipped across New Mexico and Colorado yesterday creating a stir among law enforcement agencies, news organizations, radio stations and briefly grounded air tankers fighting wildfires west of Colorado Springs.

According to the Denver Post, Pueblo air-dispatch received reports of "balls of fire or something in the air." As a precaution, officials grounded flights to ensure no aircraft were hit. Flights resumed 90 minutes later.

The event occurred between 12:35 and 12:40 MDT Wednesday afternoon. Witnesses say the fireball lasted about 3 seconds about 45 degrees above the ground, heading from the north to the south and ending near the horizon, with a tail color ranging from bright white to yellow and red. Some of the nearly 20 reports received by the American Meteor Society report that the brightness of the fireball was brighter than a full moon; some reporting it brighter than the Sun.

A few years ago, as a hobby, and pass-time, I set out to see if I could work out a better way of identifying potential sites to go meteorite hunting. I had learned to do battle damage assessment from aerial reconnaissance photos a long time ago in the Army. And the blast damage, and ground effects from an explosive event, are pretty much the same, no matter what the source of the explosion might be. It's only a question of scale, and explosive force. Visually, there is very little difference in the appearance of a bomb crater, and an impact crater of the same size. So a forensic technique of reading the patterns of movement in the emplacement of blast effected materials on the ground applies well in the search for potential impact related geology. The quality of the image data now commonly available to anyone with a good PC, an internet connection, and a copy of Google Earth, is excellent. In the past five years, the publically available image data has really come into its own. And today's 21st century satellite imagery allows us to study the surface of the Earth at a level of detail our fathers could never have imagined.

Back in the 1920's, using aerial photography, a geologist named J. Harlan Bretz noticed evidence for the mega-floods that sculpted the Grande Coulee, and the 'Channeled Scablands' of eastern Washington. Bretz was the first to use Aerial photographs to detect, and map, catastrophic mass movement of the Earth's surface materials when he described the scarring of a catastrophic glacial flood event at the end of the last ice age, in an event he called The Spokane Flood.

Aerial photography allowed him a perspective from which patterns of fluid flow, and catastrophic mass movement of terrain materials, could be perceived on a scale that had been unimaginable until he described them. What he had found, were the patterns of fluid flow, like the ripples you see in the sedimentary deposits of a stream bed, but these 'ripples' are hundreds of feet high. Bretz saw them as empirical evidence of a major catastrophic flood event, on a scale that the standard theorists of his day thought was inconceivable.

Reports of a bright and fiery object falling from the sky in Summit County Wednesday afternoon spurred speculations ranging from a UFO or a meteor to plane debris, according to the Summit County Sheriff's Office.

At 1 p.m., the Summit County Communications Center received multiple calls about the object, with the majority coming from the Breckenridge Golf Course, according to Sheriff's office spokeswoman Tracy LeClair. Clear Creek County also had similar reports, she said.

"It was quite interesting," said resident Mary Grace McAlister, who witnessed it along with a friend at the Breckenridge Golf Course. "It looked like a bright light falling to the earth ... it looked like something was on fire, and we couldn't tell if it was an airplane."

The sheriff's office sent out special operations technician Mark Watson to investigate, who interviewed several witnesses. Because they didn't have a point of reference, it was hard to determine where it might have landed, but Watson is suspecting it ended up somewhere near Guanella Pass.

There have been no reports of missing or crashed airplanes, so it is currently believed to have been a meteor, LeClair said.

"It was like nothing I've ever seen before," McAlister said. "We were real lucky that both of us saw it, because no one would have ever believed us."

The two called 911 because of heightened anxiety about fires, McAlister said.

A possible meteor shower also grounded heavy air tankers fighting the Springer Fire near Lake George in the Pike National Forest Wednesday, the Denver Post reported.

An apparent meteor grounded heavy air tankers fighting the Springer fire near Lake George for nearly two hours Wednesday afternoon, leaving firefighters without air support.

But the fiery phenomenon left people from as far away as New Mexico in awe.

The planes were near Lake George when a pilot noticed debris falling from the sky, said Ron Roth, spokesman for the Rocky Mountain Area Coordination Center. The pilots were not sure whether it was "space junk" or a meteor, Roth said.

"We're just glad it quit," Roth said. "A rather odd phenomenon."

Several other reports pointed to a rare, once-in-a-lifetime sighting.

Six reports of a meteor - seen from Winter Park, Colorado Springs and Raton, N.M. - were received by Chris Peterson, a research assistant with the Denver Museum of Nature and Science. The American Meteor Society received seven separate reports, mostly from Colorado Springs.

"These things happen all the time, but usually they just aren't seen during the day," Peterson said.

It likely wasn't one of the more than 22,000 pieces of "space junk" floating around the earth.

Officials at the North American Aerospace Defense Command, which tracks man-made objects that threaten North America, did not report any scheduled entries or objects over North America, said Lt. Col. Mike Humphreys, a spokesman.