Well now you have

or

a small rocket ship from Krypton.

It’s in Peru… Obviously it’s The Golden Condor going to the Cities of Gold. I heard gold is high right now. I’d have followed it to become rich beyond my dreams.

Would that be the Mysterious Cities of Gold?

So thinking this is a meteor may be natural, but I’m strongly of the opinion it’s something quite more mundane.

But . . . if 100 tons of meteoritic material hit our atmosphere every year, surely meteorites are a more or less daily occurrence. And is not that pretty much the definition of “mundane”?

And also about how many people never look at the sky. This is exactly the reason that we have all these “Chemtrail” conspiracy nutters running around. Tell someone who’s never looked at a contrail for two seconds to look out for “strangely colored” or “persistant and spreading” contrails, and sure enough, they’ll see ‘em everywhere. It’s hard to know what “strange” is if you’re completely unfamiliar with all the variations of “normal.”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YuWJ_QDnMAQ

&

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xicL1CAej3I

&

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u5oniErmeuE

for more.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cities_of_Gold

Plus :

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_King%27s_Fifth

for the original – very different – novel.

See also :

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gloster_Meteor

for the Gloster meteor.

&

@49. Tim : @peptron I’m glad that someone else remembers that show.

I remember it too – that was my favourite cartoon for a long time as a boy . I just had to get home from school quickly in time to catch it. Still one of the best ever SF (Historic?) cartoons behind only Star Blazers – and ‘Battle of the Planets’ maybe,since that was the one that got my hooked on SF and the first SF TV I ever saw. Ah, memories.

I’ve also read the (very different & entirely historical) book ‘Cities of Gold’it was apparently based on – The King’s Fifth.

Yeah, it’s pretty clearly a jet airliner contrail & yetanotherexample of media beat-up, research fail and laziness. Still looks nice & interesting though.

@11. vagueofgodalming : It looks like Michele Bachmann’s election campaign to me. Well, I can hope, anyway.

Yeah. Tim Pawlenty’s maybe although it’s a bit late seeing that one crashed long ago & hardly got off the ground. Newt Gingrich’s campaign maybe?

Chris #46: When something like that is blurred, you can see more of the color as it’s not overexposing as much; the light is being spread over a larger area, and thus, it’s not as intense at any given spot as it was when it was in focus.

It’s a common trick to do with stars, where you intentionally defocus them a bit with you take a photo. This makes them appear large & blobby, but you also get to see their true colors better. It’s a bit harder to get their colors when they’re sharply in focus because the sensor tends to be overexposed in that tiny point. A similar thing would be happening here. Astronomy detail: Kepler does this too, but to get a better measure of each star’s brightness by spreading it over multiple pixels on a sensor.

You can also get similar effects with motion blur. Something bright might normally appear white, but if it moves across a darker background fast, the image it leaves on a sensor or film is dimmer, and the real color shows through better. That’s why sparks normally look white, but on longer exposures, they create long colorful streaks.

It’s curious no one else commented on the way the camera was taken in and out of focus. When it’s in focus, the contrail looks narrow and white, as it should. I presume it’s high enough to still be in sunlight.

Which of course raises the question of why it looks reddish when the camera is out of focus. It’s possible that’s an artifact of the CCD sensor’s response to light intensity; but this seems far-fetched. I have no good answer.

@Peptron #16: Holy crap. A Mysterious Cities of Gold ref. Don’t see many of those.

I”ve seen stunning sun halos outside on a day when nobody but myself is showing the slightest interest in the sky. People don’t know what they’re missing.

I’ve pointed out bright and beautiful sun dogs to people, and all I get is “meh…”

Gotta love the media, unable to fact check, research a subject or speak with an expert. They seem to prefer to go for the hype and quick headline, rather than report the truth.
Like Kevin #38 did in what? 5 minutes max and counting a coffee break?

I”ve seen stunning sun halos outside on a day when nobody but myself is showing the slightest interest in the sky. People don’t know what they’re missing.

BTW CraterJoe’s Gloster Meteor comment wins the thread, in my opinion.

So, you’re right.