Those looking out at the night sky in Southwestern Ontario Friday night might have spotted a shooting star, or as it’s technically known, a fireball shooting across the sky.
This event was captured by several all-sky meteor cameras belonging to the NASA All Sky Fireball Network and the Southern Ontario Meteor Network, operated by Western University.
Peter Brown, Professor and Canada Research Chair of Meteor Physics Western Institute for Earth & Space Exploration, reported on Twitter the fireball was as bright as the moon and passed directly over Chatham, Ont.
He said the event happened Friday at 10:07 p.m. and that the fireball ended at 30 km height just north of Lake St. Claire near Fair Haven, Michigan.
In a tweet, he wrote “very small or no meteorites likely.”
According to NASA, the video data shows that the meteor appeared 90 kilometres above Erieau on the northern shore of Lake Erie and moved northwest at a speed of 105,800 kilometres per hour, crossing the U.S./Canada border before eroding over Fair Haven, Michigan.
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NASA reports the meteor was likely caused by a fragment of a Jupiter family comet, though an asteroidal origin is also possible.
The space agency estimates the brightest of the fireball combined with the speed means any fragment would be at least two kilograms and around five inches in size.
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