TRI-COUNTY — Visitors at the Marfa Lights Viewing area on Highway 90 got a treat on July 25, but not from seeing the mysterious bouncing globes that so many flock to try and see east of Marfa.
“I first noticed in the northwest sky….it looked like there was a dot in the sky with a trail leading to another dot and they both started moving across the sky and it started breaking up,” said Michael Alberts of Houston, who was visiting Marfa. He determined fairly quickly that it must be a meteor — or more than one — shattering through the earth’s atmosphere.
According to Stephen Hummel, Dark Skies Initiative Coordinator at the McDonald Observatory in Fort Davis, that’s not what it was. The Observatory’s Star Party participants also saw it, and the brilliant slow-moving objects lasted far too long to be meteors. “It likely was a satellite or some kind of space debris,” he said. Hummel followed up to offer even more detail on the debris: “The event seen over West Texas on July 25th, 2024, was most likely caused by an object re-entering the atmosphere and disintegrating. The object, formally designated H-2A R/B (37159), is a spent rocket body from a Japanese mission to deploy a GPS satellite launched on September 11, 2010. Most fragments of the rocket body were likely vaporized during re-entry, but if any fragments did survive to reach the ground they would most likely not have fallen in Texas given the object’s speed and trajectory.”
Alberts’ friend, Marco Roberts of Houston, said that what started as dots turned into a light show of fire and colors. “Once it started breaking apart it got more and more spectacular,” he said. “It went the entire horizon. We never saw it fall. There were about half a dozen people there. People were quite amazed and in awe.”
“This wasn’t like a shooting star,” Alberts added. “It lasted almost a minute. I’ve never seen anything like this in my life.” Alberts took a video of the light show and shared it with The Big Bend Sentinel.
So, for now, the consensus from experts is that a satellite re-entered the atmosphere and burned up to create the light show for people all across West Texas. But, Texas is currently in an optimal viewing area for Perseid meteor showers, which began on July 17 and will peak on August 11 and 12 before ending on August 24. The best time to watch the Perseid meteor shower is in the pre-dawn hours.
This story was updated at 5:20 p.m, July 26, with additional information about the type of space debris.