Over 100 Meteor Vancouver Island reports follow Wednesday fireball
Scientists at the H.R. MacMillan Space Centre said meteor vancouver island viewers were among more than 100 people who reported a bright fireball streaking across the sky around 12:15 a.m. Wednesday. Dr. Rosanna Tilbrook said the object was bright enough to be classed as a fireball, a type of meteor seen very far away.
The reports came from the Lower Mainland, Vancouver Island, Washington State and Oregon. Tilbrook said the spread shows how far a fireball can travel across the night sky and still draw sightings from multiple regions at once.
Rosanna Tilbrook on fireballs
Tilbrook said, "These are meteors that are brighter than the planet Venus in the sky, so they can be seen really, really far away," explaining why one meteor can generate reports over a wide area. The centre said it received over 100 reports from people who witnessed the flash.
She also said scientists think Earth may be passing through more large debris at this time of year. "We’re actually going through a period that NASA calls ‘fireball season,’ which is kind of early in the year in the Northern Hemisphere between about February and April," Tilbrook said.
Lower Mainland sightings
Tilbrook said there have been a few fireballs seen over the Lower Mainland in the past few months. She added, "We think maybe it’s because the Earth is passing through more large debris at this time of year, so we see about a 10 to 30 per cent increase in fireballs," tying the recent pattern to the February-to-April period NASA names fireball season.
That fits a second recent report: on March 3, several British Columbians reported a bright fireball in the night sky along with a loud sonic boom. The Wednesday sighting added another widely seen event to that short run of reports.
Wednesday reports
For people across Vancouver Island and the Lower Mainland, the practical marker is simple: the flash was not an isolated local sighting. It was reported across four places at once, and the space centre's report count shows how quickly one bright meteor can be documented by people across the region.
Anyone who saw the streak Wednesday can compare their own sighting with the same time window Tilbrook gave, around 12:15 a.m., and with the same regional footprint: Vancouver Island, the Lower Mainland, Washington State and Oregon.
