Fireballs
It all started on Thursday evening, when the Polk County Sheriff's Office received a 911 call alerting them about a possible plane crash in the area southwest of Polk County. The caller then sent a couple of photos that show what resembles a white streak an airplane might leave behind when going down.
Police rushed to locate the site of the reported crash, sending a helicopter to scan the wooded area in the hope of recovering some wreckage. However, the extensive search has turned up nothing, leaving police dumbfounded over what actually just whizzed above the rural area.

An amateur astronomer sets up his home-made 18" Newton Reflector during the monthly public viewing night at the Ferguson Observatory in Sugarloaf Park. Though there were few reported meteors on the night of Nov. 21, many people heard distant sonic booms with no known source.
Or was it a meteor?
It may be no coincidence that the sound corresponded to a large but infrequent meteor shower, known as the Unicorn (or Monocerotids, from the constellation of its visible origin), seen only every 25 years or so - and last reported in 1995. But meteors are usually silent apparitions, fleeting and ghostly.
In social media groups, many people dialoged about the Thursday night noises. Descriptions of the noises ranged from "rumbles like thunder" to "like a limb fell on the house."
And it didn't seem to be particularly localized, but strong throughout the Sonoma Valley, in Nextdoor neighborhoods from Temelec to Denmark Street. Similar social media networks reported the noises at about the same time in Healdsburg, 25 miles away. Others on Facebook said it was heard in Sebastopol, Santa Rosa, Cloverdale, Petaluma, Napa and Marin.
It's what's called a "fireball."
When objects enter Earth's atmosphere, they encounter intense heat and burn up. That process creates the streak of light seen in the sky, as seen in the photo above.
While unusual, these are spotted around New England from time to time.
A team of researchers from universities in Australia and the US took a close look at several features of the crater's underlying rock to get a precise measurement on the age of Wolfe Creek's most famous landmark.
Previous estimates have stated the crater could be 300,000 years old, but the new result places it much closer to our time, perhaps as little as 120,000 years ago. And knowing this is not just a geological curiosity, either.
As far as neat-looking craters go, they don't tend to be much bigger. With little rain to wear away the walls of the impact site, Wolfe Creek crater has been remarkably well preserved throughout the ages. But the site also stands out for the fact it is the second largest crater on Earth to still have fragments of the offending space rock.
There's no doubt the shrapnel of far bigger blasts exist out there somewhere, but with ocean and ice covering so much of our planet's surface, and wind and rain eating away at the geology, evidence is hard to come by.
The impressive sight was a rock from a comet that entered the Earth's atmosphere at a speed of about 47,000 kilometres per hour at 3.48 am.
The event began at an altitude of about 81 km off the coast of Malaga. From there the fireball advanced in a northeasterly direction. It was finally extinguished at an altitude of 38 km above sea level, at a point about 78 km off the coast of Malaga and 83 km off the coast of Morocco, after a trajectory of 81 km in the atmosphere.
Comment: Another fireball was seen over Spain five days before and was filmed by the SMART project:
Some reports are saying it was a meteorite, while some claim it landed in neighbouring Carlow.
At 5.20am this morning, the flashing fireball was seen by those up early for work, or those out for an early morning run. The huge fireball illuminated the frosty and foggy sky as it shot over.
A spokesperson for Astronomy Ireland confirmed the sighting but are now seeking the public's help for more information about the sighting.
Another fireball this morning over Ireland, about 5.20am. Did any of you see it?Fireballs occur when tiny meteor enter and then burn up in the Earth's atmosphere. The last reported meteor to land in Carlow was found in Leighlinbridge in 1999.
The Leonid is expected to be best visible in the early hours of the morning on Monday, between 2am and 4am.
NASA just announced when a giant asteroid, known as JF1, would hit Earth if it continues on its current trajectory - and it's not too far from now.
The American space agency predicted that a 128-meter-long space rock - the size of the Great Pyramid of Giza in Egypt - could collide with our planet on 6 May 2022, potentially causing devastating consequences by wiping out an entire city just in seconds and causing millions of deaths.
As JF1 is believed to strike the Earth with a power of 230 kilotons of TNT - 15 times higher than the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima that was equivalent in energy to 15 kilotons of TNT.
Comment: See the local news interview with Richard Romano here.
The American Meteor Society received two reports of fireballs over Portland, Oregon and Friday Harbor, Washington on the same day.