Meteor lights up North Slave sky
Kirsten Murphy
Northern News Services
Yellowknife (Feb 19/01) - Dave Beckwith blinked in disbelief when a white light with a purple tail crossed the sky Feb. 10.
"I thought I was seeing things," he said.
He wasn't.
The fleeting spectacle Beckwith spotted above Yellowknife at about 9:15 p.m and visible across the North Slave region was likely a meteor, said British Columbian-based astronomer Dr. Jeremy Tatum.
The falling mass was also spotted in Fort Providence.
Fiona McGregor and her nine-year-old daughter were stopped beside Beckwith, at the same Yellowknife red light.
"We were thrilled. It looked like it went right across our windshield," McGregor said.
"It looked extremely close and couldn't have been there more than five or six seconds," she said.
Despite differing colour descriptions, Tatum is confident a "fireball" meteor, not a meteor shower, graced Northern skys. More important than colours, experts look at angles and directions when classifying celestial fallout. Canada's sprawling landscape means not all meteor sightings are recorded -- even though the astronomical chunks may fall daily "somewhere" in Canada, he said.
"An individual is lucky if he sees one in a lifetime," Tatum noted from his University of Victoria office.
The Yellowknife RCMP reportedly received "some" calls about a UFO-isque sighting, as did a radio station, the geophysical observatory (which monitors earthquake activity) and Northern News Services.
Marjorie Sandercock looked up from a book while at a Prelude Lake East cabin.
"It moved left to right in a slow arc and then it crumbled into the blackness, as if onto the lake," Sandercock said.
The "burning out" suggests the meteor dropped to subsonic speed before reaching the earth's surface.
If and where the meteor landed remains a mystery.
Sky watchers wanted
A branch of the Canadian Space Agency needs a Northern camera operator for their meteor monitoring program.
Edmonton is the closest city with the specialized cameras. The invitation falls on the heals of the recent meteor sighting in the southern NWT.
For more information contact Dr. Jeremy Tatum at University of Victoria, 1-250-721-7749.
What's the difference between a meteor and a meteorite?
METEOR: Small body of matter, likely an asteroid, visible as a streak of light. The object falls from space as a result of friction with the earth's atmosphere.
METEORITE: The rock or metal fragments resulting from a meteor hitting earth.
- some meteors travel between speeds of 50-70 km/second, considerably faster than an airplane but not as fast as a meteor shower.
- even though the meteor sighted north of Yellowknife seemed extremely close, it was likely at least 10 kilometres away.
-- Sources: Oxford Dictionary; Dr. Jeremy Tatum, astronomer from the University of Victoria.
