Fire in the Sky
Time: Approx: 7:15 p.m.
Location of Sighting: Highway 17 north just east of Sault Saint Marie.
Number of witnesses: 2
Number of objects: 1
Shape of objects: Round.
Full Description of event/sighting: We were driving home and we saw a bright green fireball the size of a beach ball in the sky going from west to east at a high rate of speed.
The meteor that streaked across the sky on Saturday night is likely to have crashed into the waters off the coast of Denmark, according to a leading astronomer.
Michael Linden-Vørnle, of the Tycho Brahe Planetarium in Copenhagen, said all evidence points to a landing site somewhere in the Baltic Sea south of the islands of Lolland and Falster.
The spectacular phenomenon lit up the skies of southern Sweden and eastern Denmark at 8:15pm on Saturday night for approximately eight seconds and prompted dozens of calls to police and emergency services from worried residents.
SOS Alarm and the Gothenburg air-rescue service were bombarded with telephone calls from mystified observers across southern and western Sweden shortly after 8pm on Saturday evening.
Witnesses reported seeing a huge flash of light stream across the night sky.
"There are a great many people who have seen it. We have received phone calls from Trelleborg to Lidköping," said Annika Vestergård at the air-rescue service to news agency TT.
About 6 p.m. Thursday, people near Cross Lake saw a bright flash and heard an explosion that rattled windows and brought them out of their houses and onto their yards to look over the water. Speculation over what it could have been included a bomb and a methamphetamine laboratory hidden in the woods.
It took a while for people to arrive at the logical conclusion: It probably was a meteor.
Mike Gallant was on his way from Bathurst to Moncton when, at exactly 4:45 p.m., he saw a luminous teal-blue streak that lit up the darkening sky. "It looked like a meteor to me," he said. "It was clear as day to myself and my passenger."
He described the streak as being darker on the bottom and lighter in colour towards the top, although the entire object was extremely bright. "It completely brightened the sky," he said.
Half Moon Bay, California - We were heading south on 1 at Montara Beach, Jan 7, about 8:45 PM.
The meteor appeared to the southwest. It was quite low, just above the treeline, but winked out before it was obscured by the trees.
The Canadian Fireball Reporting Centre received about a dozen reports of a meteorite falling to earth at about 5:45 a.m. but the hazy conditions have made it difficult to verify.
"I don't know how anyone saw it. There were a lot of clouds up there," said the University of Calgary's meteorite expert, Alan Hildebrand. "But it's possible there was a hole in the clouds that allowed them to see it. It's happened before."
Comment: Readers from Germany and the Netherlands at this link have also reported seeing the meteorite, which suggests that this was a fairly large "space rock". Keep watching the skies, 2009 may well turn out to be a "smashing" year...