"We were at a party in Deer Run when it passed.  There were several people outside and everyone saw it.  It looked like a comet.  It was beautiful, but at the same time it was a little scary because you're really not sure of what it is," said one eyewitness to the natural phenomenon.

"My wife and I were driving in from San Antonio when we saw it light up the sky and fly by," said another, "My wife got a better look at it than I did because I was driving, but I noticed it.  It turned the sky into a blueish white color from horizon to horizon, my wife said she saw the tail end of something across the sky."

"It was really beautiful, it lit up the sky, it literally lit it up like it was daytime," said another witness who was driving down El Indio Highway coming towards town, "It was scary though because you don't know.  I was so paranoid because you think the worst like if the world was going to end, I'm glad I wasn't alone and my boyfriend calmed me down."

An expert from NASA's Meteoroid Environment Office, Dr. Bill Cooke estimated that the meteor weighed approximately 4,000 pounds and burned 5 times brighter than a full moon.

"This was definitely what we call a fireball which by definition is a meteor brighter than the planet Venus," he told reporters on a conference call Sunday.

"This event was so bright that it was picked up on a NASA meteor camera in the mountains of New Mexico over 500 miles away which makes it an extremely unusual," he said, "This was a very bright event."