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A digital picture of a spectacular and apparently explosive event in the sky fooled a pair of seasoned NASA scientists, has other researchers around the globe mystified, and made a minor celebrity of a teenage photographer.

Jonathan Burnett, 15, was photographing his friends skateboarding in Pencoed, Wales when one of them noticed a colorful fireball in the sky. Burnett snapped a picture, then sent it to NASA scientists and asked if they knew what it was.

Robert Nemiroff and Jerry Bonnell, who run NASA's Astronomy Picture of the Day (APOD), posted the photograph on Oct. 1 and wrote that "a sofa-sized rock came hurtling into the nearby atmosphere of planet Earth and disintegrated." They called the picture "one of the more spectacular meteor images yet recorded."
Images

The Picture: Jonathan Burnett's photograph, which has scientists baffled.

A photo taken from about 10 miles away, by Julian Heywood, confirmed that Burnett's photo was legitimate and helped scientists decide the event had something to do with a jet contrail

Problem is, it turns out, there was no meteor."