Fireball spotted streaking across Vancouver sky Monday night
Photo courtesy: @macksuhm/Instagram
Digital Reporter
Wednesday, August 20, 2014, 3:31 PM - Did you see the meteor that streaked across the Vancouver sky Monday evening? Experts say the brilliant light show was caused by a meteor.
The streak of bright light lit up the skies over Vancouver Monday around 10:15 p.m., generating lots of excitement.
Residents in Vancouver, Maple Ridge and Surrey reported seeing the fireball -- which was later confirmed to be a meteor.
“Most likely, it’s a remnant from the meteor shower that we just went through — the Persieds. Most likely, it was just a piece that was trailing from that meteor shower from the past couple of weeks,” Derek Kief of the H.R. Macmillan Space Centre told News 1130.
The Perseids come from the Swift-Tuttle comet which orbits the sun once every 133 years.
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Humans have been observing them for at least 2,000 years, and this latest round of showers will be visible in the sky until August 24 of this year.
Meteors are tiny rock or metallic space substance that burn up upon reaching the Earth's atmosphere. They can move upwards of 72,000 kilometres per hour.
Meteors that penetrate deep enough into the Earth's atmosphere are capable of producing a sonic boom.
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