Glowing meteor lights up northern B.C. sky

A fireball blazing across the skies over northern B.C. on Sunday is likely the brightest type of meteor seen from Earth, according to an eye witness and local astronomer.

"[I'm] basically just watching TV and saw this really bright one and it had a nice blue-and-orange plume behind it," Jason White ofFort Nelson told host Sarah Penton on CBC's Radio Weston Monday.

White, an amateur astronomer living in Fort Nelson for 25 years, says this was the most intense meteorhe'sever observed.

WATCH| Shiny meteor captured by the doorbell camera of Fort Nelson residentArlene Chmelyk

Besides Fort Nelson, people in Charlie Lake, Tupper, Upper Cache and other parts of the northalso reported sightings of the very shiny meteoron Sunday at about 8 p.m. MT.

Prince George Astronomical Observatory president Malhar Kendurkar says he will have to watch the video captured by the observatory in order to confirm, butimages fromdash and doorbell cameras posted on social media lead him tobelieves it's a bolide a very bright meteor.

"A bolide is basically a meteor, but it's much bigger in size than a meteor," Kendurkar said on Radio West.

"We have millions and millions of meteoroidsjust in space," he continued. "When a meteoroidenters Earth's atmosphere, it becomes a meteor or a bolide."

Kendurkar says a bolide could travel at a speed up to 70 kilometres per second and if it's big enough, it could create a small crater once hitting the ground.

"If it was big enough, like maybe if you are talking about the size of a car or something, then it would be terrible for our planet. But this was a pretty small bolide."

Kendurkar also says colours of the plume left by the bolide indicate the kinds of minerals on the meteor.

Sightings of bolides have been reported from other parts of Canada in the past, such as Edmonton in September 2019 and Newfoundland in 2012.