SIGHTING: CHICO, CA

Witness Testimony

" golden ball with tail of sparks over sierra Nevada MountainsI was at the west edge of Chico, looking east toward the Sierra Nevada Mountains, with a dark sky above. I saw a large, bright golden ball with a thick tail of what looked to be sparks, moving at about the rate of an airplane. It was moving from south to north and lowering in altitude gradually, not steeply. As I watched, the ball split into two pieces and both continued in the same direction. The one in the front was larger than the one in the rear and it began moving faster than the smaller one in the rear, so the distance between the two became greater as they continued in the same direction from south to north and lower toward the mountains. From the time I first saw it, as one ball with a tail of sparks until after it split into two and both disappeared behind the silhouette of the Sierras might have been a minute. I could not see any red/green lights that would indicate it was an airplane, and it moved much slower and was much larger than a meteorite,! and it was too close to be a comet.((NUFORC Note: Space debris. PD)) "