TEXAS FIREBALL: After nightfall on Feb. 1st, a spectacular fireball appeared in the skies of eastern Texas and Oklahoma. As is often the case for unexpected night-sky phenomena, few pictures are available. The best so far comes from a police dash-board camera in the small town of Little River-Academy, TX:

Eye-witness Daryn Morran reports: “At approximately 756pm CST, over Abilene, Texas, I saw an object falling from the sky much brighter and long-lasting than anything I’ve seen. [The fireball] lasted close to 8 secs before completely burning out. At first, it was bright white, and then started slowing down and getting brighter. Then it exploded like a firecracker artillery shell into several pieces, flickered a few more times and then slowly burned out… awesome!!!”

Another observer in Coppell, Texas, reported a “double boom heard at 8:00:30 CST. [The object appeared to be] 1/2 the size of the waxing moon, and broke into two major chucks with many smaller pieces. It had a ‘white plasma’ (sun-colored) look with a long golden tail.” (This report was relayed by NWS meteorologist Joe Harrris in Frt Worth.)

According to Bill Cooke of NASA’s Meteoroid Environment Office, this was probably a natural object–a small asteroid about the size of a car or bus–not a decaying satellite or other manmade space debris. The fireball, which disintegrated in the general vicinity of Dallas-Fort Worth, was bright enough to be seen on NASA cameras located in New Mexico more than 500 miles away. “It was about as bright as the full Moon (astronomical magnitude -13),” estimates Cooke, who is still analyzing data and sighting reports in hopes of calculating the object’s orbit. He might yet figure out where the Texas fireball came from

fr/spaceweather.com