* Astronomy

Meteorite? Satellite? Something else?
Whatever it was, the area has been buzzing about something in the sky near Culbertson, Montana, US around 10 p.m. Monday.

"The only thing that we saw was a flash of light. There were several small flashes, then a large one. It sounded like a jet, like a jet engine after it broke the sound barrier." - Don Steppler, Richland County resident.

Steppler lives four miles east of Brockton, about 15 miles west of Culbertson. He and his son were working outside at the time.
A gathering of people at Girard Hall also witnessed the incident, as did individuals throughout the Culbertson area.
Rumours began to circulate that law enforcement and federal agents swarmed to the site, looking to see what might have fallen from the sky.

"We had a deputy out there Monday night, but he didn’t find anything" - Richland County Sheriff Brad Baisch.

He said he couldn’t begin to speculate as to what people might have seen.
They aren’t saying one way or the other. An agent at the Glasgow field office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, which covers Roosevelt County, said she could not confirm or deny the involvement of government agents.
Whatever it was, it certainly got people talking. Patrons at the Wild West Diner in Culbertson had been talking about the sound, but they hadn’t noticed any investigators.
Culbertson Mayor Gordon Oelkers said law enforcement was investigating what was definitely “a light streak” and a “sonic boom or bang,” but he didn’t have theories on what it may have been.

Deputies from the Roosevelt County Sheriff’s Department were unavailable for comment.
Rumours that the weather service was pegging the light as a meteorite or a comet, though, were exaggerated.
The National Weather Service out of Glasgow said they had gotten calls from the Roosevelt County Sheriff’s Office and other law enforcement, so any information they could give would be “that much more removed.” They also said their radar is not configured to monitor anything that “fast moving,” and declined to guess what it might have been.

Source

-- Edited by Blobrana at 15:12, 2006-06-14