Minnesota residents across a 50-mile radius reported seeing a bright flash and a thunderous ‘sonic boom’ in the sky over Beltrami County Monday night — and now a NASA astronomer and a local astrophysics professor are on the case.

The American Space Agency analyzed footage from an airport that captured a ‘horizontal’ object streak across the sky when the boom rattled windows and shook homes.

NASA analyzed footage from an airport that captured a ‘horizontal’ object streak across the sky when the boom rattled windows and shook homes

Aside from the local witnesses to the bright flash and the thunderous boom, three videos were obtained by Chris Muller, director of Beltrami County Emergency Management.

The first was a security video from a private residence in Nymore, south of Lake Bemidji.

Muller told DailyMail.com the video ‘clearly shows a very bright white/blue flash over the sky,’ followed by the thunderous boom 2.95 seconds later.

The one key video, which came from the Bemidji Regional Airport four miles to the northwest of Nymore, shows what appears to be a blindingly fast white streak zoom past the airport

Muller has reviewed additional footage from the airport’s camera, from Monday night and at times during the day, and now suspects the object could be prosaically explained.

‘There’s nothing that would have been interfering with the video camera, such as a wire or something like that reflecting light,’ the emergency management director told DailyMail.com in a telephone interview.

‘But one obvious thing is that bugs were flying around,’ he said.

‘And there were other bugs before that one. And it just so coincided that the timestamp on that was the exact same time as the other reports.’

Chris Muller, director of Beltrami County Emergency Management, has reviewed additional footage from the airport’s camera, from Monday night and at times during the day, and is now suspects the object could be prosaically explained. ‘There were bugs flying around,’ he said.

But while emergency management continues to pursue a terrestrial explanation, Craig Zlimen, the owner of science collectibles company Minnesota Meteorites, believes that the meteorite theory can’t yet be ruled out. Zlimen said such a meteor could sell for ‘thousands’ per gram

While that does not rule out the controlled maneuvers of a controlled craft, Muller said that Beltrami County Emergency Management is not investigating the incident as a flying saucer case.

‘I don’t think it was a UFO in the sense of aliens,’ Muller told DailyMail.com, ‘and don’t want to sound that I do.’