This event was widely observed over Colorado at 6:15 AM MST. It was reentering space junk, not a natural meteor. The reentry was seen by witnesses in Colorado, Utah, Wyoming, Montana, Idaho, Nebraska, Kansas, New Mexico, and Arizona. It was captured on several allsky cameras, and was also recorded by several news helicopters in the Denver area.
Cody Beers, a spokesman for the Wyoming Department of Transportation, said the WYDOT Webcam on State Highway 28 at the Louis Lake turnoff near South Pass captured the image of an orange ball coming down in the area. That early report of possible wreckage on the ground sent locals and news organizations scrambling. Sgt. Stephen Townsend of the Wyoming Highway Patrol said a trooper found the small area burned in the snow about 35 feet from the edge of the highway, but found no object. The highway was closed at the time because of wintry weather. The trooper didn't see any other falling or fallen objects because of poor visibility from snow and blowing snow.
“Several viewers across the intermountain area saw a bizarre sight streaking across the dark morning sky. Our CBS affiliate in Denver had their chopper in the air at the time and shot this great footage.”
SkyFOX pilot Rob Marshall and photojournalist Josh White captured the event at about 6:15 a.m. Mountain Standard Time while they were flying over Denver.
It wasn’t a meteor, it was rocket booster A brilliant object that burned in the early morning sky was a Russian booster rocket re-entering the atmosphere over Colorado and Wyoming, according to NORAD and the U.S. Northern Command.
Pieces of a Russian rocket body re-entered the Earth's atmosphere early this morning, blazing a fiery path across the skies over Colorado and Wyoming, according to the North American Aerospace Defence Command. Initial reports indicate that a chunk of the SL-4 rocket landed in Riverton, Wyo., near Highway 28, at around 6:13 a.m., according to NORAD. No damage was reported, and the debris is not believed to be hazardous, according to a NORAD news release.
A Soyuz-U Rocket Body that was launched on the 27th December 2006 from the Baikonour Cosmodrome for the COROT Mission, is predicted to re-enter the earths atmosphere on the 4th January 2007 @ 13:21 UTC ± 5 hours