Lana Haight, The StarPhoenix.com
Published: Thursday, November 20, 2008
The blinding light of a massive fireball lit up Saskatchewan's night sky Thursday.
"It lit up the yard almost like midday, but just for an instant," said Bruce Trapp, who farms near Harris, about 70 kilometres southwest of Saskatoon. "It was far brighter than any lightning strike I've ever seen."
In some places, the fireball, which streaked across the province and beyond at around 6:30 p.m., appeared white. In other places, it was a flash of rainbow colours.
"It seemed like fireworks or a missile coming down. The sky lit up greenish and yellow," said Shawn Mitchler, who was pumping gas at Family Confectionery on Highway 16 at Radisson, about 60 kilometres northwest of Saskatoon.
He estimates the light show lasted five to 10 seconds.
"My heart just started racing because I didn't know what it was."
Mitchler wasn't alone. The RCMP emergency dispatch centre in Regina received 911 calls from people wondering what was going on.
"We got lots and lots of calls from all over the province - from one end of the province to the other. Cut Knife to Fort Qu'Appelle," said one dispatcher.
Rick Cowan of Lloydminster didn't see the phenomenon but he heard about it.
"Edmonton, Lloydminster, Rosetown, Swift Current," he said, listing where friends and family live who called him to talk about the sighting.
"We're talking hundreds of miles apart."
Cowan's son, driving near Swift Current, almost hit the ditch when he was startled by the bright light that engulfed the cab of his truck. And a friend reported the windows rattling in his home in Lloydminster. The fireball was also seen over Edmonton and in the sky as far north as Fort McMurray, Alta.
Locally, Saskatoon Fire and Protective Services contacted the city's airport for possible aircraft problems. The airport gave an all-clear.
The fireball occurred after a meteor, anywhere from "the size of a baseball to that of a Volkswagen," entered the Earth's atmosphere. The ice cold space rock itself wasn't on fire, says Richard Huziak of Saskatoon, a member of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada.
"These are moving at quite a speed. They're moving anywhere from about 30 up to about 70 kilometres per second. That's about 200 and some thousand kilometres per hour. When they hit the atmosphere, they burn by friction. The atmosphere heats up and ionizes all the gas around it. You've got very high temperatures - tens of thousands of degrees for a few seconds. . . . You see the trails of the meteor, not the meteor itself."
Huziak thinks the meteorite likely landed somewhere near the Alberta border. It may be possible to determine a more precise location. Fireball video cameras designed to begin recording when a bright light appears in the sky are located in Saskatoon, Regina, Moose Jaw, Edmonton and Calgary.
"It's very likely this one has been caught. It will show the track through the sky and might show the orbit back into space," he said.
While Thursday night's light show was spectacular to all who saw it, Huziak says a fireball is detected flashing across the sky in Saskatchewan every couple of weeks.
"But you have to be looking in the right direction at the right time. Or you see a flash behind you, but three seconds later, it's history."
Despite that many meteorites falling to Earth, very few actually cause damage because the rocks often disintegrate as they travel through the atmosphere.
lhaight@sp.canwest.com
http://www.canada.com/saskatoonstarphoenix/story.html?id=6d8c40d6-eaca-454e-a537-2586b2ba0ec4By Jamie Hall
edmontonjournal.com
11-20-08
EDMONTON - Calls are pouring in about the sight of a bright light in the skies over the Edmonton area.
Marcel Gobeil, who lives on a farm just west of Beaumont, was sitting in his living room when he heard what he describes as a "loud boom," followed by the sight of bright colourful lights just before 5:30 p.m.
"At first I thought it was fireworks," said Gobeil. "I've never seen anything like it; it was green and blue and then turned to bright red.
"It was pretty big."
Gobeil said he also saw the object hit the ground about 10 seconds later.
"It seemed like it fell on Beaumont, but it's more likely it landed in Manitoba or Saskatchewan if it was a meteorite," he said.
Edmonton fire dispatchers, meanwhile, said they contacted both the international and municipal airports after reports of the bright lights to see if an airplane had gone down. They still have no idea what the object was.
"Everyone seems to have seen something," one dispatcher said, "but we have no call on it."
http://www.theufochronicles.com/2008/11/mysterious-bright-light-seen-over.html And check CTV News:
http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20081120/alta_fireball_081120/20081120?hub=TopStories
