Although the fireball appeared during the Leonid meteor shower, it was not a Leonid. Infrasound recordings of the blast suggest a small asteroid hitting Earth's atmosphere and exploding with an energy of 0.5 to 1 kiloton of TNT. Experts liken the event to the Park Forest fireball of 2003, which scattered dozens of meteorites across a suburb of Chicago. Meteorites are likely from this fireball as well.
Approximately 6 hours after the fireball, people in Utah and Colorado got another surprise. As the sun rose over those states, a twisting electric-blue cloud appeared in the dawn sky:
"These curious clouds on the horizon caught my attention just before sunrise," says photographer Don Brown of Park City, Utah. "They were strangely bright relative to the rest of the sky."
The cloud strongly resembles artificial noctilucent clouds formed at high altitudes by rocket and shuttle launches. Yet there was no (officially reported) rocket launch at dawn on Nov. 18th. Could the cloud be associated with the fireball? The geographical coincidence is certainly striking. Debris from the fireball should have dissipated by sunrise, but the cloud remains unexplained and a connection to the fireball cannot yet be dismissed.
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