Sometimes, you don’t have to pretend that airplanes in the night sky are shooting stars. A massive meteor was seen shooting across the sky over a Modest Mouse show this weekend, right when the band played a song about space. The natural phenomenon occurred at the Fun Fun Fun Fest in Austin, Texas, during a song called “Dark Center of the Universe.” One fan happened to catch it on video while he was filming the show.
The American Meteor Society, which has reported that it is currently peak season for meteor showers, received over 200 reports of a UFO on Saturday night at 8:45pm. Most agreed that it was meteor, but the San Antonio National Weather Service tweeted several hours later that there were still no official reports of anything landing. For this reason, they initially theorized that it may have been a sonic boom of some sort.
While most fans were in awe at the coincidental timing, some accused it of somehow being a publicity stunt by Modest Mouse. The meteor eventually crashed down in Central Texas, confirming the initial guesses and disproving the critics. It weighed about 4,000 pounds and was travelling at approximately 55,000 miles per hour.
A similar occurrence happened in April of 2013, at a rock concert near Santiago del Estero in Argentina. The sky suddenly lit up during a performance by the folk band Los Tekis. This particular meteor caused a colossal flash of light, but did not land. It broke the upper atmosphere at over 81,000 miles per hour and disintegrated around 40 miles above the ground. Like the Modest Mouse meteor, this one was also miraculously timed. The fireball burst behind the stage right at the end of Los Tekis’ set.
Though meteors can be dangerous, this kind of natural lightshow is preferable to the ones that have notoriously haunted the concerts at RFK Stadium in Washington D.C. Three fans were struck by lightning just before a Grateful Dead and Bob Dylan concert in June of 1995. The victims, Kristin Daniel, Kira Lee, and John Pongel, were huddling under a tree before an oncoming thunderstorm. Daniel was briefly in a coma, but all three made a full recovery. Another deadly lightning strike occurred at RFK in 1998, during a Tibetan Freedom Concert. Twelve spectators were injured, four critically, but they too recovered from the blow.