We usually refer to one of those as a Fire Ball. It's the same thing as a shooting stars you usually see but bigger. A shooting star is a small pebble burning up in the Atmosphere not much bigger that a grain of sand. The one you saw was a little biger than a grain of sand. I've seen them glide along as you said and somethims they explode with a flash at the end. Once, in a dark clear quite area, myself and 2 friends saw one explode like, about 2 minutes later, we heard a noise like thunder in the distance. That was it exploding in the atmosphere. Very cool stuff.
That's it;
BOB SAL