Paul Fry had just awakened Monday when he went into his kitchen and looked out the window.

The Sharpsville man said he saw a fireball streak across the sky, but lost sight of it because of the building next to him.

"It was big and it was bright," said Fry, who saw it at about 5:30 a.m. "I could see it right through the clouds."

Fry said he had no idea what the object might have been. He said he saw rockets in Vietnam, but never anything like this.

"It was just so fast," he said. "It was really weird."

What Fry probably saw was a bolide meteor, said Jean Philpott, office manager of Carnegie Science Center, Pittsburgh.

Most meteors are specks of dust -- called meteoroids -- that burn up in the Earth's atmosphere, leaving the trail of light commonly called a shooting star.

Bolides are bigger chunks of rock, maybe the size of a baseball, said Ms. Philpott, who has a degree in astronomy and physics from the University of Pittsburgh.

She said an employee of the science center reported seeing a blue and green fireball at about the same time.

Fry said the fireball he saw was red, but Ms. Philpott said the difference in colors is inconsequential, only a trick of light as the meteor travels through the atmosphere.

While the Earth has been hit by large meteors -- called meteorites -- throughout its history, a bolide poses no threat to anyone on the ground, she said.

"It burns up before it hits the ground," she said.

A red fireball with a tail, also attributed to a bolide, blazed across the sky at about 7:40 p.m. Oct. 2, 2001. Reports were received from Mercer, Beaver and Allegheny counties.

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