Calls poured in to law-enforcement offices across eastern Virginia, Maryland and North Carolina late Sunday after what looked like a fireball in the sky.
A meteor? Aliens?
The U.S. Naval Observatory says the most likely explanation is a Russian booster rocket falling toward the Earth.
“It’s perfectly consistent with what everybody’s been describing,” said Geoff Chester, a public relations officer with the observatory.
The booster, basically a big steel cylinder, was part of the Soyuz spacecraft that launched Thursday on a mission to the International Space Station, Chester said.
It was expected to fall toward Earth on a path across the Chesapeake Bay region, Chester said. Streaks of light were reported from North Carolina to Maryland.
Stefan Bocchino, a spokesman for the Joint Space Operations Center in Southern California, part of the U.S. Air Force, said experts there were trying to determine if the lights were caused by part of the Russian craft or some other manmade object.
Other experts have suggested the light and an explosion-like sound were caused by a meteor burning up and breaking apart in the atmosphere.
A source at the National Weather Service said the likely cause was a rocket booster returning to Earth that exploded over Cape Hatteras last night.
While sightings were widespread from Richmond eastward, law enforcement in Central Virginia reported no disturbances.
Mark Courtney, manager of the Lynchburg Regional Airport, said tower personnel did not report any sightings of the strange lights.
Lynchburg’s Emergency Communications Center and dispatchers in Campbell and Bedford counties also reported no calls.
Monday morning, experts said the lights in the sky and sounds that many people heard could have been caused by a big meteor burning up in the Earth’s atmosphere.
Neal Sumerlin, director of the Lynchburg College Belk Observatory, said that oftentimes, unexplained sightings in the sky are actually common occurrences that people don’t usually notice.
“People usually don’t look at the sky,” he said. “But (when) something draws their attention like this, people immediately go to, shall we say, unnatural explanations.”
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