WATCH: ‘Fireball meteor’ streaks across Sask. skyline, astronomer

A bright flash of light turned heads across Saskatchewan early Wednesday morning, before fading back into the darkness.

“Boom. It was just a big light,” Michael, who was travelling between Rosetown and Elrose, said. “It was orange, and then it burnt out, and it was kind of like there was different colours.”

Kate, who was driving a school bus near Langham, said she saw a huge flash of light streak the sky.

“It was green, I was sure I saw an alien,” Kate said with a laugh. “It was only for a second.”

Whatever it was that zipped by, it tapered to orange, red, then purple, around 7:30 a.m. in the morning, she said.

The different colours projected from what flew by was a sign to Dr. Samantha Lawler, an associate professor of astronomy at Campion College at the University of Regina, that it was a fireball that zoomed by.

“The bigger ones actually explode in the upper atmosphere,” she said. “That’s probably what a lot of people saw.”

Lawler was first suspicious that it could be a piece of space junk re-entering the atmosphere when she first heard about the huge bright light.

Read More:

• Farmer who found space junk donates to Ituna arena renovations
• Picking up the pieces: SpaceX comes to get space junk from Ituna farm
• ‘We had a real good inkling’: Farmer finds space junk in field near Ituna

“It’s so bright,” she said. “I was really impressed.”

A bright light flares in the sky in East Helena, Montana (Katie Anderson/American Meteor Society)

Lawler said a fireball is a very bright meteor that burns up on the earth’s upper atmosphere. She believes this specific space rock was about a foot long.

Around 170 reports on the American Meteor Society show people saw the fireball meteor around the same time on Tuesday from Utah to Saskatchewan.

“That’s a huge range of area,” Lawler said. “Which makes me think that this one was probably a little brighter than than usual.”

A video caught what is assumed to be the fireball flying overtop of Calgary, lighting up the sky. (Michael Powers/American Meteor Society)

Lawler said fireballs are quite common flying by a few times day, but you have to be looking at the right time, in the right direction.

For a person who spends a lot of time looking at the sky, Lawler said she has never seen a fireball. It can occur a few times a day.

“It’s a really special thing to get to see one,” she said. “I think it’s really neat that so many people got to see this in Saskatchewan.”