Bright Fireball Spotted Over Parts Of US, Canada [Videos]

Hundreds of people reported seeing a bright flash of light early Wednesday morning. The event occurred over parts of the United States and Canada.

It was about 6.24 a.m. EDT on Wednesday when a bright light that streaked across the sky over Ohio caught the attention of hundreds of people. Soon people in other parts too reported spotting it. Many took to social media to share their experience, describing it as a blue or green light that flashed extremely bright and then went out just as quickly. This can be observed in some of the footage of the fireball event, now dubbed 5441-2020 by the American Meteor Society (AMS).

In a video shared by the AMS on Twitter, the fireball can be seen reflected on the roof of a car as the surrounding area suddenly becomes bright before turning dark again.

The AMS received over 560 reports of the sighting Wednesday, most of which were from Ohio. The other reports were from Maryland, Tennessee, South Carolina, Pennsylvania, Kentucky, New Jersey, New York and Ontario, Canada.

The event is still under investigation but the AMS calls it a "fireball event." By definition, a fireball is a meteor that shines brighter than the planet Venus. The colors that they produce provide a clue regarding their composition, with green signifying the presence of nickel, yellow the presence of sodium and blue-white the presence of magnesium.

The AMS explains that several thousand fireballs actually happen in the Earth's atmosphere each day but many of these happen either during daytime when they cannot be easily observed, over uninhabited places such as above oceans, or late at night when there are only a few people who get to see them.

"Additionally, the brighter the fireball, the more rare is the event," the AMS said in a news release about the event.

People who spot these events are encouraged to report them to the AMS because when many people report a particular event, such as in the case of 5441-2020, it is more likely that experts will be able to pinpoint its trajectory and source.

In June, for instance, several reports of a fireball over Texas led experts to believe that it was not a cosmic object but a piece of space junk that had reentered the Earth's atmosphere.