Researchers from Western University captured an image of a bright fireball in the sky over southwestern Ontario Wednesday.
A post doctoral associate in Western's Physics and Astronomy Department said the Elginfield Observatory security camera caught a bright light streaking across the sky just after 12 p.m.
Denis Vida estimated the magnitude of the fireball at about -15, which is brighter than a full moon but not as bright as the sun.
In an email to BlackburnNews.com, he said the object was travelling at about 100,000 kilometres per hour.
A fireball spotted in the sky by the Elginfield Observatory cameras - Dec 2/20 (Photo courtesy of UWO)
"It was a reasonably fast object, with a speed of around 30 km/s (~100,000 km/h) which entered the atmosphere at around 12:10 ET today at a steep trajectory (at least 45 degree entry angle)," said Vida. "We are still waiting for the data to come in, but the rough size of the object is probably on the order of 10s of centimeters. As there is still a lot of uncertainty, I cannot comment if there are some meteorites on the ground or not. If the speed was lower (<20 km/s) than what we think at the moment, probably yes. If not, then the body completely disintegrated during the main fragmentation, which produced the boom you heard."
There were reports from some areas of a loud boom.
By mid-afternoon Wednesday, the American Meteor Society said it had received 64 reports of a fireball seen over Ontario (including Woodstock and Strathroy), Michigan, Maryland, New York, Ohio and Virginia.
Vida said such events are more common than people may think.
"As for the frequency of these objects, on the global scale, they occur between once a day to once every couple of weeks (depending on the size, smaller ones are more frequent). As 70 per cent of the earth is covered by oceans, and about 10 per cent of the landmass is reasonably densely populated, people witness such events about once a month," he said.
Catherine Woods of Sarnia said she and her husband were heading toward Petrolia on Rokeby Line near Brigden Road at noon Wednesday.
"And we both saw a bright flash, like something streaking through the sky and my husband looked at me and said I think that's a meteorite, and it looked like it was burning up," said Woods. "We were kidding around and said, whoa, ET's come home sort of thing."
Woods said it was very noticeable despite it being a bright, sunny day.
Whoa. Just after noon, a BIG fireball flashed through the sky over Niagara. The @EarthCam CN Tower cameras caught the flash from it at ~12:03:32! Wow, it was bright!#Fireball @amsmeteors pic.twitter.com/6piLtC1Kqt
— Scott Sutherland (@ScottWx_TWN) December 2, 2020