Green, orange, purple flames likely a meteor

SALT LAKE CITY -- Residents in Utah, Colorado and southern Wyoming saw a fireball, which some said had a long tail of green, orange and purple flames that raced across the night sky.

"People said it had a 500-foot tail and it was huge, like a meteor, and green and orange," La Plata County, Colo., sheriff's dispatcher Kristy Lee said.

The fireball was seen at 7:30 p.m. Sunday.

"It was probably a meteor burning up in the atmosphere," said Peter Wilensky, meteorologist with the National Weather Service/Colorado Basin River Forecast Center.

No man-made objects fell from space Sunday night, said Maj. Ed Thomas, a spokesman for the North American Aerospace Defense Command in Colorado, which tracks satellites and space debris.

"We don't have a mission to track meteorites, but that's got to be what it is," Thomas said.