I saw a bright red light appear in the sky, like Mars but not moving, then it took off straight up and disappeared into a ball of smoke that covered the sky. A rocket?

R. White (rwhite@frontier.net) writes:

"On Wednesday morning ( 5 March, 1997) at 5:30 AM my friend was walking along South 12th ( Street?) and noticed a big bright red light appear in the sky in front of her. As big as Mars but in the wrong spot. It did not appear to be moving and we thought it was a plane, but then it gave a short jerk upwards and grew in brilliance and then disappeared into a ball of smoke. The smoke spread across the sky and we thought we had witnessed a tragedy. There was no debris falling from the sky."

It's almost impossible to speculate what this was since I have no clue what city the observation was made from. Things like this should be reported to your local TV or Radio station. They usually know what is going on locally. Fireballs do funny things in the sky, but this is rather bizarre even for a fireball.