http://www.space.com/scienceastronom...ay_031013.html

Do you agree with some of the legitimate speculation in the article concerning this fireball? And what is your opinion of the criticism of NASA?

Well, the APOD site published it pretty quickly, and took it as a daylight fireball;
pretty soon other people were disagreeing with this verdict.
(read some discussion of this event here)
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/wales/south_east/3155928.stm
One person said it looked like dumped fuel igniting. This worries me a bit; why hould a jet dump fuel except in an emergency? Do they do this a lot?

I see Space.com think it might have been Concorde...

they also suggest a 'false sun', a kind of parhelia type phenomenon caused by reflection and refraction within ice crystals.

If you look at the second photograph you will notice that the illuminated part of the trail looks pretty much identical, despite having been taken from ten miles away at a different angle.

'False suns' and other parhelia are very dependent on the angle of observation, and I would have expected that the second photo would have been noticeably different, and the bright 'false sun' should have been at a different point in the contrail.
Instead it seems to be at the same point, right at the end of the trail, and apparently lower down in the sky with respect to the observer.

This is not how parhelia present themselves at all.

So, I tend toward the fuel dump theory; an act which the pilot concerned might not admit to.

Just my thoughts on the subject...

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There is also a discussion about this in Against the Mainstream.

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