Video captures massive meteor as it lights up sky in Canada

New York Daily News ^ | November 23rd 2008 | Michael Sheridan

[Lorianne]

amazing video

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

A fireball shoots across downtown Edmonton in this image taken from video sent to CTV Edmonton by Andrew Bartlet, late Thursday, Nov. 20, 2008.

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

A CTV map details the area of western Canada where the flash was reportedly visible.

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

fyi

[NormsRevenge]

60 kilometers per second.. that’s boogying.. cool stuff.

[neverdem]

thanks, bfl

[Oatka]

The thing grew brighter and brighter until the lights turned off again. I was waiting for the Soviet nuclear blast but instead the thing exploded silently in a huge fireball then disappeared. . . . But for a few moments I thought WWW3 had started.

I was just a kid in NYC in the late 40s or early 50s when I heard a low rumble, looked over towards New Jersey and saw a large mushroom cloud. I thought that Joe Stalin had started the Big One. Scared the yell out of me. It was "just" a ship that was loaded with ammunition - and I guess someone was clumsy. Nobody who knew for sure was left.

[OldNavyVet]

"... and at the end the supposition was maybe this was much more common than we thought...."

From "Darwin's Ghost" by Steve Jones. page 218 ...

A trillion comets orbit the sun. The gravel that surrounds them appears, should it hit our atmosphere, as a shower of meteors. The Earth gains a ton in weight every hour from their dust. Two thousand asteroids big enough to destroy civilization orbit nearby.

[brytlea]

Yeah, I try not to think about it! ;)

[Alberta's Child]

Awesome.

One thing that I've always found pretty amazing about these things is that they seem so cataclysmic from the ground, but then most experts indicate that the object was actually pretty small. One guy quoted in the article says it was probably no larger than a grapefruit.

[SunkenCiv]

SASKATCHEWAN FIREBALL: Amazing Video!
Spaceweather | Nov 20th, 2008
Posted on 11/21/2008 11:30:07 AM PST by TaraP
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2136090/posts

[SunkenCiv]

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[SunkenCiv]

> a show on Discover last night about Mammoths and a comet hitting the earth 13k years ago

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The Cycle of Cosmic Catastrophes: Flood, Fire, and Famine in the History of Civilization by Richard Firestone, Allen West, and Simon Warwick-Smith

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[Marine_Uncle]

Very impressive. Must have been one heck of a big chunk to be seen that large of an area.

[drtom]

The main reason for that is that the light phenomenon you see actually does not originate from the meteor itself (as in a glowing piece of rock) but from a cloud of ionized gas surrounding it. The kinetic energy of the meteor ionizes the gas around it, which in return produces the light when recombining.

This way a seemingly small object can produce a brilliant shine.