UWindsor astronomer describes 'very bright meteor' in Windsor-Detroit sky

University of Windsor astronomer Steve Pellarin in Windsor, Ont., on Wednesday, Nov. 15, 2023. (CTV News Windsor)

If you noticed a bright light in the sky over Windsor Tuesday night, you weren’t alone.

The American Meteor Society outlines 30 reports of a meteor seen in the sky over Windsor and Detroit around 7:40 p.m.

University of Windsor astronomer Steve Pellarin says he didn’t see it, but looked up the details of the event Wednesday morning.

“It was a very bright meteor, which we sometimes call a fireball or a bolide,” says Pellarin. “And these are particularly large pieces of debris that are coming from space that slam into the Earth's atmosphere and because they're so big and they have tremendous speed, when they hit the atmosphere, it's it's like throwing a rock into a deep pool.”

He says it’s fairly common for smaller pieces in the sky.

“Well, they happen this many times a night with smaller pieces. I mean the Earth, we estimate gets hit by enough material that it adds 200 tons of material to the earth each day. So there are lots and lots of these little rocks that are coming down and hitting the Earth's atmosphere.”

Pellarin adds this one appears to be have been the size of a baseball, or maybe even as big as a watermelon.

“Most pieces that come down are just like sand grains or maybe tiny pebbles, but this was a particularly large piece and so it made a very bright trail. It's quite possible that pieces of an actually dated all the way to the ground and have landed somewhere.”

Even though research teams have cameras set up to record meteors, anyone who sees unusual activity in the sky can report it to the American Meteor Society.