A ROCKET TRAIL WITHOUT A ROCKET: When the sun set on Wednesday evening, many people in central California were watching the sky, waiting for a rocket launch. A Delta IV Heavy was scheduled to blast off from Vandenberg Air Force Base, carrying a spy satellite to orbit for the National Reconnaissance Office. Ten minutes before liftoff, however, the launch was scrubbed. This strange "rocket trail" appeared anyway:

Photographer Richard Sears of Atwater, California, was one of thousands of onlookers who watched the glowing plume twist hypnotically in the wind. "At about 5:36 p.m., this meteor contrail appeared. I didn't see a fireball, though, I was looking at my iPhone at the time trying to see if the rocket launch was going to be a go!"

Indeed, it was a meteor. Dashcam video broadcast by CBS news captured the instigating fireball. It appears to be a sporadic meteor--that is, a random meteoroid from no organized shower. The inner solar system is littered with such meteoroids that have, for eons, been chipped off of passing asteroids and comets.

Coincidentally, this meteoroid struck Earth's atmosphere over California just as the rocket was supposed to launch. No way? Random fireballs like this happen more often than you think.