A giant piece of a recently launched Chinese rocket fell to Earth last night (July 27), blazing a spectacular sky trail that left observers across parts of the western United States slack-jawed.
The dazzling fireball lit up skies over Utah, Nevada, Colorado, Idaho and California about 9:40 p.m. local time Wednesday (12:40 a.m. EDT and 0440 GMT today, July 28), breaking into many bright pieces as it went.

The sky show occurred around the peak of the annual Delta Aquarid meteor shower, but it wasn't caused by bits of comet dust. Rather, experts say, the culprit was the second stage of China's Long March 7 rocket, which launched on its maiden flight June 25.
The 6-ton rocket stage hit Earth's atmosphere at about 18,000 mph (29,000 km/h), said astronomer Jonathan McDowell of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, also an assiduous satellite tracker.