Planetarium manager offers explanation for fireball that lit up Manitoba sky

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This article was published 04/01/2018 (3136 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

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A fireball that lit up the night sky in southern Manitoba Wednesday night was a rogue meteor, not part of a larger meteor shower.

“This isn’t the Quadrantids, the annual shower of typical shooting stars. This bright flash was a single object that was much bigger that just happened to come in on the same date,” said the Manitoba Museum’s Scott Young, manager of the planetarium.

The brilliant blue-green light also lit up social media, with Facebook and Twitter messages and videos confirming sightings by the dozens in Manitoba, Ontario, Wisconsin and Minnesota as far south as Minneapolis.

By Thursday morning, professionals were busy following up the reports.

“If you saw the fireball last night, please go to www.imo.net and click on the ‘Report a Fireball’ link. This is where all reports are being collected,” Young’s automatic email response said. The IMO site is run by the International Meteor Organization.

Sagkeeng First Nation resident Eric Courchene was driving along Highway 11, which follows the course of the Winnipeg River and passes through Pine Falls, when he and his wife saw the flash.

“I think it was about 9:30 p.m. I saw the tail light of it and it exploded. It lit up the whole sky, blue. Blue and then the centre of it was pretty much bright white light. It lasted, holy smokes, it was 10 seconds at least,” Courchene said.

If astronomers and geologists are looking for pieces after the fireball — known as a bolide — exploded, it would be bits of rock that fell to earth, Young said.

“By the time the rock gets to the ground, it’s cooled off. It stops burning several kilometres above the surface, and the temp is about -50 up there,” he said.

“So it would just be a black rock, maybe laying on the snow, but maybe punching through the snow and just looking like a hole. Probably small pieces, yes. Smaller than a golf ball, all the way down to dust.”

The location of the debris is anyone’s guess.

“Everybody thinks that it just came down ‘behind those trees,’ or whatever, when it’s actually dozens of kilometres away. It’s something about the way our brain processes bright lights against a dark background that makes it seem closer,” Young said.

Many paired the appearance this year of the Quadrantids with the super moon Tuesday night as twin spectacles in the night sky that led to some confusion about whether Wednesday’s meteorite was just part of the meteor shower.

The arc of the fireball was picked up north of Winnipeg, east to Ontario and south through several American states including North Dakota and Minnesota.

“We were lucky to have this happen when the sky was clear and dark. These bright fireballs happen once a day or so somewhere in the world, but they often don’t get seen because they happen out over the ocean or above the clouds,” Young said.

Social media started buzzing about the fireball almost immediately with posts on Facebook and Twitter.

“Ken and I were out for a walk last night at this time (9:22 p.m.) and we saw this meteor,” one Winnipeg resident reported on Facebook.

“There was a bright flash of light that lit up the area around us. There was a huge fireball with an orange tail. An amazing sight! Did anyone else see a flash or actually see the meteor? Pretty cool!” Lisa Kroker said.

One video posted to Twitter captured a green flash, like sheet lightning. It lit up a pair of cabins in a wooded clearing near the Lake of the Woods in northern Minnesota.

alexandra.paul@freepress.mb.ca