DENVER -- The telephones lit up in the at the news desk and in the 24/7 Weather Center at 7NEWS Tuesday evening as bright shooting star raced across the sky around 7:30 p.m.

Witnesses reported that the bright meteor was visible for several seconds, burning blue, green and yellow as it moved across the sky from the East toward the Southwest.

Did you see the meteor? Send your photos or video to MyReport

The meteor eventually broke into several smaller pieces before disintegrating.

Phone calls came from all along the Front Range and as far away as Albuquerque, New Mexico.

Even though these shooting stars seem to be very close to the ground, in general, most of these "fireballs" burn up quite high in the atmosphere -- often 10 to 20 miles above the surface of the Earth.

The brilliant light and the colors that are seen are caused by the vaporizing of the material as it hits the Earth's atmosphere at 50,000 to 70,000 mph! The greenish color often reported is actually the glow of ionized oxygen.

Few of these objects ever actually reach the ground, even though it often appears that they have hit quite close by.

It is not uncommon to have reports over half of Colorado or even several states, and each witness is quite certain the object must have hit nearby.

Most of these meteors are only about the size of a golf ball to maybe a baseball when they hit our atmosphere, less than one to two percent of the mass typically survives to the ground -- if any at all.

Scientists do want to know about the sightings as we can try to determine where any of the remaining mass of the object might have landed. There is an excellent link that you can go to and report what you saw.

cloudbait.com

Give this site a try and you will also learn much more about "Shooting Stars"!

There are a lot of really neat things to see in our skies if you know where and when to look. As a weather forecaster, most of my expertise on sky conditions rests down in the atmosphere, but I do know of several websites that should be helpful.

Spaceflight.NASA.gov

Heavens-Above.com

GeoData.com (use this if you need to figure out your latitude and longitude)

The following is for solar flares and sunspots. With the peak of the eleven year cycle, we are seeing a tremendous increase in solar activity. As a result of this stormy weather on the sun, we have a chance in Colorado to see the Aurora Borealis - a rarity in these parts.

My expertise in forecasting is mostly from the Earth's surface up to about 60,000 feet, so the Northern Lights and solar flares tend to be a bit beyond my realm. However, there is a very erudite Web site that should be able to keep you up to date on our chances to see the aurora.

The Web site address is Maj.com

Here are a few other sites that may be of interest:

Clem.mscd.edu

SpaceWeather.com

SunSpotCycle.com