DAVENPORT, Iowa - A slow-moving fireball in the night sky this week spotted in Eastern Iowa remains a mystery.
An astronomy enthusiast and his wife in Davenport say the bright orange fireball took several minutes to move through the western sky Thursday night, August 8,at about 9:30.
The couple took photos, and Janice Blanche-Fisher tells KWQC-TV 6 that she and her husband Jim thought the mysterious object looked like a sideways orange ice cream cone.
The experienced sky-watchers say it was too fast to be a plane, and way too slow to be a shooting star or meteor. It took two to three minutes to move slowly through the sky.
Even using binoculars, the couple say they couldn't tell what the object was. (ZOOM photo of object below)
The FAA, Federal Aviation Administration says air traffic controllers didn't pick up anything unusual on their radar.
A website dedicated to fireball reports has an unusually high number of fireball reports in the United States the same night, around the same time, including sightings in Minnesota, Missouri, and Kansas, more than a dozen in Florida, and many more in other parts of the world.
CLICK HERE for American Meteor Society fireball reports. Photos from KWQC-TV 6 by Janice Blanche-Fisher.