Goodness gracious, a great ball of fire!
Edmonton residents were treated to a spectacular meteor Saturday night. The celestial object hurtled across the sky around 10 p.m. local time, and put on a show for dashcams, security cameras and doorbell cams across the city.
The streak of fire had many people wondering if Superman had landed in Northern Alberta.
And no, it wasn’t E.T.
… or Edmonton Oilers star Connor McDavid.
The bright streak was likely a bolide — a very bright meteor — or maybe even a super bolide, Mike Hankey, operations manager for the American Meteor Society told the CBC. The brightness of a super bolide is comparable to the full moon.
University of Alberta geologist Chris Herd speculated to the Edmonton Journal that the rock was about one metre in size.
But, the impact it had on Edmonton’s collective imagination was much larger.
The American Meteor Society is asking anyone who witnessed the meteor to fill out a Fireball Report online to help researchers learn more about it.
Now, intrepid meteor hunters will begin the fun part — the search for chunks of fallen space rock. The last notable meteor sighting of this scale in Alberta came in 2008 with the Buzzard Coulee meteorite. That fireball was five times as bright as the full moon and split into more than 1,000 pieces that fell in Alberta and Saskatchewan.
This one isn’t quite that big. But scientists will still set out to triangulate where it could’ve landed.
If you do happen to find a space rock — and who wouldn’t want that! — remember that it’s technically the property of the person who owns the land it fell on. Experts are also advising you report it to the University of Alberta for research purposes.