A bright shooting light illuminated the Edmonton sky—and residents’ security cameras—briefly Saturday night.
Local amateur astronomer Bruce McCurdy had front-row seats to the action. He was volunteering at the Telus World of Science’s RASC Observatory, chatting with visitors, when he was interrupted by a bright flash of light.
“I happened to be standing beside one of the telescopes, right under the sky, talking to a couple of visitors, and this interloper came firing across the southeastern sky and left its mark,” said McCurdy, who is also a writer for the Journal’s Cult of Hockey blog. “It got a huge reaction from the people who were there, myself included.”
While the meteor passed far too quickly for detailed measurements — it was overhead for five seconds, at most — McCurdy quickly made note of some key attributes of the event. He then used that information to file a report with the International Meteor Organization.
“In the shock of the moment, I tried to get an accurate sense of the details,” McCurdy said. “The direction, how fast it was going, how bright it was, what colour it was, the fragmentation that we saw near the end.”
Chris Herd, a University of Alberta geologist who is the province’s foremost expert on meteorites, wasn’t lucky enough to catch a first-hand glimpse of the fireball because he spent the long weekend camping in northeast Alberta. But after poring over social media reports, he’s excited to dig into the event.
“The size, we don’t know yet, but the fact that some people reported sounds and that it changed in brightness as it came down would certainly suggest that this is what we call a meteoroid,” Herd said. “That would be the rock as it came in from space as it goes through the atmosphere.”
My Google Nest Cam also caught the meteor over Southeast Edmonton/Sherwood Park tonight. Taken at 10:23pm. #yeg #yegwx #yegmeteor #yegmeteorsighting pic.twitter.com/v7CTXq42pA
— Lincoln Ho | Yegventures 🇻🇦🇨🇦🇭🇰 (@yegventures) September 1, 2019
