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A bright fireball was seen streaking across the night sky over Victoria, on Vancouver Island, on Tuesday night.
The American Meteor Society said it received over 100 reports about the fireball, stretching as far south as Oregon.
Michael Unger, the director of programming at Vancouver’s H.R. MacMillan Space Centre, said that the footage appears to show a meteor.
“It definitely looks like a fireball came in pretty fast and burned up, creating a spectacular streak of light across the sky,” he told Stephen Quinn, host of CBC’s The Early Edition.
Unger said the meteor sighted on Tuesday was similar to one that shot across B.C. in early March, causing a loud boom that was heard in multiple communities.
He said people are drawn to meteors and fireballs — a term usually used to refer to meteors larger and brighter than normal — because one represents “literally an alien rock that is coming to us,” and people are drawn to the unknown.
“Especially I think, like, in light-polluted cities where we actually don’t see as many stars or feel as connected to this night sky, when all of a sudden we see a bright flash across the sky light up, you know, it really excites us,” he said.
CBC News has reached out to NASA to see if the U.S. space agency recorded the fireball and its trajectory.
