Doorbell and dash cameras across the Canadian city of Edmonton captured an unbelievably bright fireball which exploded over the city, turning night into day and mesmerizing residents in the process.
The fiery object, which appeared to be a meteor, streaked across the night sky for about four seconds at 10:30pm local time, leaving many residents’ mouths agape as their eyes adjusted to the sudden and extreme brightness.
“While I was doing that, I heard kind of a ‘boom,’ and I actually thought someone set off a firework,” eyewitness Wes Glassford said. Glassford just so happened to be staring up at the sky waiting for the northern lights, and thankfully snapped a spectacular photograph of Saturday’s unexpected pyrotechnics.
“This fireball would have been seen for 600km from either side of it, probably,” said Mike Hankey, operations manager for the American Meteor Society, who speculated that the object was likely a bolide, a very bright meteor, based on the roughly 69 reports he has received.
The meteor spectrum ranges from meteor, to fireball, to bolide and super bolide, which is brighter than the Moon and almost as bright as the Sun.
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