Around 7 PM yesterday (Tuesday, September 16, 2014), residents in Tamaqua noticed black smoke rising from Locust Mountain, located to the northwest, after seeing a radiant slow-moving object disappear behind the mountain.
Amanda Sanders-Costenbader and Jennifer Strohl, who were both standing near the intersection of Patterson Street and Willing Street in the Dutch Hill section, shot video and photos (see below) of the strange glow as it gradually passed overhead.
They said that the bright object appeared to travel northward over the west section of Tamaqua until it disappeared behind the mountain.
“It looked like a streak of fire,” said Costenbader, who added that they observed the object in the sky for about five minutes.

About a minute after the object disappeared, Costenbader said she saw black smoke (see her photo below) rising from where the object receded behind the mountain. She added that the smoke lasted a few minutes.
Another witness, Vanessa Rabayda, of Coaldale, stated that she also noticed the light in the sky while attending her daughter’s soccer practice at the Mary D Sports Complex. “I saw the light thingy in the sky. I thought it was a plane or something,” said Rabayda, who said she also observed the dark smoke a short time later while traveling on the Pottsville Stretch (US209).
Online resources state that bright, slow-moving objects in the sky could be the result of numerous things; to include a distant fireball (bolide), meteor fragment, space debris, artificial Earth satellite, sun reflecting off aircraft, etc.
Currently, it is not known if the luminous glow and black smoke are related. Although the timing of both events is remarkable.
This spotting in Tamaqua comes days after a meteor fireball lit up the sky over parts of central Pennsylvania late Sunday. Astronomers said that sighting (which only lasted a second or two) involved a meteor traveling 60 to 100 miles above the Earth.
Online resources state the fastest meteors to enter our atmosphere move at about 26 miles-per-second. Add earth’s forward velocity to that and it goes up to almost forty-five miles a second. These kinds burn up and are gone in less than one second. Meteors that come from the other direction, however, are essentially chasing the earth through space. Their speed is decreased by the same amount as our forward velocity, thus traveling much, much slower.
This observance in Tamaqua, like many similar sightings, will probably go unidentified. Although the combination of the glowing object and black smoke will definitely keep people talking.

Video and Photos courtesy of Amanda Sanders-Costenbader: