A streaking blue-white object lit up the pre-dawn sky like a giant fluorescent light bulb for a few moments Sunday morning — to the wonder of possibly hundreds of early-bird Alabamians.“It lit up the entire room. I looked in time to see it burn out,” said Lee Byrd of Montgomery, who was up at about 4:20 a.m. with his sick child.
Dennis Dunn was on his way to work as circulation director at the Anniston Star when “the lights were switched on.”
“It was a strange feeling. It was well before the sun was going to come up, but it was like a fluorescent light flickered on in the sky and everything was lit up,” Dunn said. He looked to the south to see something “too big to be called a falling star.”
“I got to the paper and about 30 carriers were waiting because we had a late print, and they had all seen it too,” Dunn said.
Calls to police and Emergency Management Agencies about the light were made in this region of northeast Alabama, said David Edwards, morning supervisor at Calhoun County’s 911 office.
“We didn’t get in calls on it here, but for a while it was all you could hear about on the state law enforcement channel,” Edwards said. “There were obviously people from Birmingham to Etowah and St. Clair Counties who saw it.”
Some witnesses reported hearing a “boom” after they saw the light streak across the sky.
Alabama EMA duty officer Gregg Miller said a mysterious flash was reported in Shelby County. Miller said he was investigating.
No police agency in Calhoun County reported receiving calls about the light.
Dr. Bill Keel, an astronomer at the University of Alabama who did not witness the light, said it was likely produced by a very large meteorite hitting the atmosphere.
No meteor shower is due to hit Earth for another eight days, when the Geminid shower begins, Keel said.
“Showers have lots of little flashes and they come fairly predictably,” Keel said. “It’s the really big things that light up the sky, and they can come at any time. They’re what we call ‘sporadics.’”
A few other things that could disturb the night sky are reentering satellite debris and satellites reflecting sunlight — like the 80 Irridium satellites now circling the world with mirror-like antenna arrays.
“But with something supposedly this big, in the absence of more information, I’m thinking this was a sporadic meteorite,” Keel said.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
