{rjl} Fireball in sky over eastern Florida
Just after dinner on the 17th of April, 2012, I went into the back yard to work on the pool. It was still daylight, around 6:30 p.m. My back porch faces east, and although we are just north of Tampa, we have watched shuttle launches across the state a Canaveral from there.
As I opened the screen door to walk out to the backyard I saw a fireball in the sky a bit south of where we have seen the launches. There was no noise. At first I thought it might be a rocket gone bad although I hadn't heard of any launches scheduled for that time.
I have seen the video someone posted of this same event, glad he caught it (Mufon Case#37553), although it seemed to me that the flight path was more south/southeast than north as he reported.
The object was very far off: approx. 150 miles from us and must have been many miles up. However, it wasn't following any of the familiar flight paths of the planes we see daily. It also looked to be far larger than a plane since we only see contrails of planes flying that far east of us. We don't really see the shuttle itself, just the fire of the rocket and its trail. This was clearly a big, flaming object hurtling across the sky
I called my two boys out to confirm what I was seeing, they're younger and have better eyes. They both confirmed it was a fireball, they claimed to be able to see it flaming. They both insisted if was not a plane. It was a flaming ball like object with a tail of fire leaving a single, irregular smoke trail, not the straight parallel lines of a jet.
It was never reported about on the news or in any meteor reports. I just now came across the other person's video of this on youtube and thought I confirm his sighting.