Mysterious bright light seen over Edmonton
Laura Drake, edmontonjournal.com
Published: yesterday 9:06 pm
EDMONTON - It wasn't a bird and it wasn't a plane, but whatever it was in the skies over the city last night was far more exciting than either of those.
People across western Canada reported seeing a bright flaming object light up the sky around 5:30 p.m. Thursday. It was variously described as green, yellow, purple and blue and appeared as either an explosion or an object streaking through the sky. Sightings came from across the prairies; from as far south as Medicine Hat and as far north as Beauval, Sask., 600 kilometres from Edmonton.
Edmonton International Airport spokesman Jim Rudolph said "the skies east of the airport lit up" at 5:27 p.m.
"According to NavCanada, it appears that this was the result of a meteorite, but that has not been confirmed," said Rudolph, adding that operations at the airport were not affected.
"What we probably saw was a fireball, which is the result of a rock coming into the atmosphere," said Chris Herd, an associate professor in the University of Alberta's department of earth and atmospheric sciences and curator of the university's meterorite collection.
"The big question now is whether or not anything hit the ground."
Though many of the witnesses who contacted the Journal claimed to see something land, Herd said that was likely an optical illusion. Since the fireball was a bright light several kilometers up in a sky, it would have appeared close to anyone who saw it. If something did hit the ground, it's extremely unlikely anyone would have seen it. As the object fell through Earth's atmosphere, it would slow down, and the resulting decrease in friction would cause it to stop burning, Herd said.
