© CTV News, CanadaCorinne Reid saw something quite spectacular in the evening sky yesterday! What was it?
At first glance, I thought it might be a fireball; after all, this is the time for the annual Taurid Meteor shower; the peak occurs this Friday. And to add to the intrigues, a viewer reported a bright light streaming across the sky near Port Felix, at the same time the day the before!
Over the next little while, more information trickled in. Corinne tells us that the "event" lasted about 10 minutes; time enough for her to get her camera. She zoomed in with the 200X digital zoom on her camera.
The post and photos got some very interesting comments from experts in various fields. A member of an Observatory club in Toronto said it was an aircraft.
Locally, Jeff Dalton weighed in and added that it could very well have been space junk, entering our atmosphere.
Michael Boschat at the Halifax Centre of the Royal Astronomical Society Canada says " 100% definitely a short aircraft contrail image. " He says that even seasoned observers occasionally have a difficult time differentiating them from fireballs.
That does make sense: we're seeing a ball of fire because the jet is moving away from the observer. It's all about the angle of the jet in in sky in relation to the photographer.
Jeff Dalton made a good point and it's something I say a lot too: "Whatever it may be, or was, it is a neat sight. I keep telling people to keep an eye on the sky because there are all kinds of things to see above, day and night! This is yet another example".
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Hypersonic projectile testing? No, wait, it's Hillary's campaign going down in flames!