Published on 23 Jan 2014 By TheLifebeyondearth
A Dillon resident saw a huge fireball in the sky, just before 8 a.m Tuesday. Ruth Jackson of Dillon spoke to NBC Montana over the phone and says she had no idea what she was looking at, so she pulled over to take a photo.
"We were driving east on Helena St. in Dillon and the sun hadn't come up yet but there was this bright thing in the sky and I said to my husband, 'What is that?'" said Jackson.
She was a passenger in the car along with her husband and two granddaughters. They were on their way to drop the girls off at school when they stopped to take the picture.
"I am always looking for something to take a picture of, but this was just awesome," said Jackson.
We showed the photos to the MSU Space Grant Consortium and met with Director Angela Des Jardins. She tells us what they appear to be at first glance.
"When I saw it first, the first thing that came to mind is something was falling through the air that was on fire," said Des Jardins.
Des Jardins tells us with so little information it is hard to pinpoint what exactly this could be, but she did rule out a few possibilities.
"You can put to rest that there is any aliens or anything like that, and I am not the biggest expert on meteors but I think you can probably safely say it was not a meteor," said Des Jardins.
The Montana Space Grant Consortium gets photos from people across the state on a regular basis. However Des Jardins tells us these photos are unlike anything she has seen so far.
"I can see why this is capturing people's imagination and why they really wanted to take pictures of it because that is pretty rare," said Des Jardins.
