Blazing fireball spotted shooting through Calgary skies

by Stevie Smith - Jan 7 2009, 13:00

Quickly becoming something of a favoured landing zone for all manner of inbound space debris, the skies above Canada have once again been treated to a fiery meteor, which takes the recent total to three in the last couple of months.

Putting aside suggestions of an oddly draw out alien invasion, the latest meteor was spotted rushing through the early morning clouds south of Calgary on Monday, January 05, with The Canadian Fireball Reporting Centre (CFRC) receiving around a dozen eyewitness reports on or around 5:45 a.m.

However, according to initial comments made by Alan Hildebrand, renowned University of Calgary meteor expert and coordinator of the CFRC, poor visibility conditions on Monday suggested that sighting confirmation and possible impact points would be difficult to establish.

Despite the potential hindrance to verification thrown up by the weather, the claimed sightings have been lent a little credence by Sherri Gallant of the Lethbridge Herald, who writes that a CFRC volunteer was able to capture around six seconds of the event on video.

Having seen the brief but tantalising black and white footage, Mr. Hildebrand commented that the blazing ball of fire appeared in the skies east-southeast of Calgary before then moving off to the south at a distance of around 200 to 300 kilometres.

“It’s hard to say how bright it was, [due to the black and white footage, but] it was certainly a significant fireball,” he said, “I can imagine the rock involved is approximately 10 kilograms, a rock maybe the size of your head.” 

Hildebrand has also said speed and trajectory suggest the latest sighting is unlikely to be part of the annual Quadrantid meteor shower that rains down upon Western Canada at the beginning of every January.

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