Earth Watch Report - Meteors

Meteor lights up sky over Toronto; not a Leonid

Kris McCusker
680 News
 
There was an unexpected sight in the sky Thursday morning for some 680News listeners, who called the newsroom to say they believe they saw an asteroid of meteor shooting over the sky around 6:45 a.m.

One listener named Sherry said she was waiting for a coffee when she saw a very bright light that caught her eye.

"You know how the North Star is really bright and big. From where I was looking it was five times bigger than that from the naked eye; it was huge, it was massive," Sherry said.

Although it's not yet confirmed, an astrophysicist and lecturer with the University of Toronto isn't doubting what people saw, and he too, is pretty sure it was a meteor.

"The 680News report that I got from a woman that I heard this morning, that sounded like there be some real meat to it," Dr. Ian Shelton said.

"There's regular clockwork in terms of the fact that you can predict that there's going to be a certain number every year coming down, whether you see them or not," he added. "But in terms of knowing where they're going to happen, exact frequency and any other details about them, they're gifts from heaven basically and we just take them as they come."

Shelton said based on the ground track, what people saw probably was not the slow-moving space station, which quickly moved across the sky approximately an hour earlier, nor was it an early meteor from the Leonid shower, which is supposed to peak Friday night into Saturday.

And for anyone who missed Thursday morning's show, Shelton said the Leonid shower will start becoming visible late Thursday night, anytime after 11:30.

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