It was a meteor that lit up the evening sky over parts of Alberta Wednesday – dozens saw the meteor, and some shared their accounts with CTV News.
TELUS World of Science astronomer Frank Florian confirmed a meteor was seen in the sky over northern Alberta Wednesday evening after 5 p.m.
“We do know that last night at about 5:22 p.m. there was a bright meteor, sometimes called a fireball or bolide, seen off towards the northeast of Edmonton, at least from the local reports,” Florian told CTV News Thursday.
News of the fireball quickly spread on social media.
“There is a lot of buzz, actually,” U of A meteor expert Chris Herd said. “I think it’s in part because it happened about 5:22, you know, people [were] coming home.”
Corbet Kratko’s dashboard camera captured the fireball Wednesday evening.
“To the eye, it looked like, like a ribbon of fire,” the Edmonton-area resident told CTV News, he said he called his wife right away.
“I said ‘I wish I had a camera’, and then I just, I’m driving and I’m looking, I’m like, ‘Wait a minute, my dash cam!’”
Fort McMurray resident Khristine Scott Lavery has a camera on her doorbell – her video captured the meteor through the narrow space between her home and garage.
“The kids are pretty excited, they took [the video] to school today for show and tell,” she said.
Florian said some reported hearing loud bangs after the flash in the Lac La Biche and Fort McMurray areas.
For those who happened to see the fireball, and thought it may have been close by, Florian said looks can be deceiving.
“Some of the reports from the Edmonton-area and St. Albert area reported seeing something off to the northeast, and some people thought it might’ve just went up by Morinville…not too far away from the Edmonton general area,” Florian said, saying reports from areas farther north suggest otherwise.
“Even though they’re quite bright and they look like they’re relatively close, they can be many hundreds, if not thousands of kilometres away depending up on where you see them in the sky.”
Florian said experts are trying to narrow down where any meteorite fragments may have ended up.
“There definitely is pieces left of this object somewhere in northern Alberta,” Florian said.
With files from Bill Fortier