2006-02-02 - Thousand Oaks, CA - Circle

Distant very bright object holds position over 20 minutes then moves rapidly, slows to near stop then explodes and falls toward earth.

Just after the sun had set while looking South West at the moon, which was about 50 degrees high in the sky, I noticed a bright light at about 30 degrees high and around the 5 o’clock position from the moon, which I assumed was the planet Venus, very bright. It was very slight oval to circular in shape and had a bluish haze to it. After grabbing binoculars (10 x 50) and observing the object in the same position for around 20+ minutes it suddenly and very quickly moved to the 9 o’clock position of the moon and continued to move toward the 10 o’clock heading north at a very slow rate. At that moment there was a large puff of misty light-grey smoke and the object immediately dimmed and exploded into red flames and plummeted towards the earth. As it fell, smaller pieces broke away, and the flames appeared to grow brighter until after a minute or so of falling it burned out and I was unable to continue tracking due to low light. However, for a moment after the flames went out I did see a dark object continue to fall. As far as distance from me that the object was I can only guess at least 10 miles maybe 70. It did take well over a minute for it to fall about 8 inches at arms length.