Overview

Eyewitnesses from Toronto and around Canada reported seeing a bright fireball, which lit up the night sky, before striking the ground in Lake Ontario.

The science and other stuff to know

Fireballs are exceptionally bright meteors that are spectacular enough to be seen over a very wide area, according to NASA’s Center for Near Earth Object Studies. The meteors, commonly known as shooting stars, are caused by meteoroids that are not large enough to survive passage through the Earth’s atmosphere intact. A large meteoroid that survives its fiery descent and hits the ground is called a meteorite.

Recently, a fireball was captured on video flying over the sky in Ontario, Canada before it struck Earth near Niagara Falls. According to NASA, astronomers had anticipated the fireball three hours before it landed in Lake Ontario.

~1-m space object – temporary designation #C8FF042 – strikes Earth over Canada, creating stunning #fireball☄️

For only the 6th time in history, this impact was predicted.

Find out more about predicting #asteroid impacts from the last time this happened 👉https://t.co/zwPKXeUEUl https://t.co/XbDqtiDuom pic.twitter.com/5yHGWibSki

— ESA Operations (@esaoperations) November 19, 2022

The Minor Planet Center, which monitors asteroids, also said seven observatories had spotted the object before it entered the Earth’s atmosphere. This triggered a “warning of an imminent impact.” The European Space Agency (ESA) said the object was less than 1 meter (3 feet) wide in size.

So what?

Global efforts to identify large asteroids and to detect them before impact have grown in recent years. Besides this recent fireball event, astronomers have detected five other objects from space before reaching Earth since 2008. According to the ESA, this is a result of improved observation technologies and greater global collaboration.

Detecting and observing these objects before they hit our planet allows researchers to warn people to stay safe if a medium-sized meteor is expected to fly by and explode. In the case of large objects, detecting them in advance allows researchers to employ asteroid deflection missions before reaching Earth.

What’s next?

The worldwide astronomy community is mapping asteroid’s population near Earth with the aim of tracking all potentially dangerous asteroids. While none of the asteroids are currently posing an immediate threat, “killer asteroids” like the one that wiped out the dinosaurs are often more than 1 kilometer (0.6 miles) wide.