ABC7 helicopter crew recounts their bird's eye view of the meteor over the Bay Area

HAYWARD (KGO) -- If you listen to ABC7's helicopter crew talk about last night's meteor, you'd think they were talking about a big fish that got away from them.

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"Suddenly out of the corner of my eye I see a trail. I say, whoa," said Sky7 pilot Olivier Gruner. He tells the story as he sits in the cockpit of the yellow helicopter he was flying over San Francisco yesterday when he saw a bright flash in the sky. Sitting behind him was camera operator Walter Colby.

"Oliver is up there with sweat coming out of his forehead saying, 'What is it?'" recounted Walter with a smile. The two joke about their reaction now, but when they first saw the bright light, they didn't think it was anything extraterrestrial.

Olivier saw it first and alerted Walter.

"So I take a quick look and I see this streak and I say, 'Yeah, that's definitely a rocket launch out of Vandenberg Air Force Base,'" said Walter. "And it turns I was wrong."

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Walter let his assumptions get the best of him. He shoots rocket launches in his spare time and posts them on YouTube, but he missed an important clue yesterday.

WATCH A ROCKET LAUNCH SHOT BY SKY7 PHOTOGRAPHER

"It looked like a rocket launch. It's just, now that I see it, it was upside down," said Walter.

Luckily, the new camera on the SKY7 can tilt up and they were able to shoot the meteor's trail. Looking back, the whole incident is a little bit sobering for them.

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"A little bit scary to know that up there, there is maybe a meteor is straight going for the earth and we don't even know it yet," said Olivier.