Dashcams, Tweets Show Bright Daytime Fireball Over Ontario, Canada on May 4

By Nancy Atkinson - May 05, 2014 09:42 PM UTC | Planetary Science

A rare daylight meteor streaked across the skies over southern Ontario, Canada and the U.S. Northeast during the afternoon of Sunday May 4, 2014, with brightness "rivaling that of the Sun," said the

American Meteor Society

. Reports of a bright fireball followed by a loud sonic boom were reported on social media, and several dashcam videos emerged showing the fireball, showing an unusual vertical trajectory.

Experts estimated the space rock that caused the excitement as being about half to one meter in diameter and exploding with a force of 50 tons of TNT energy. Canadian meteor expert Peter Brown, a professor at the University of Western Ontario said in the

Winnipeg Free Press

that he is confident that the fireball was large enough that some meteorite fragments may have hit the ground. .

Compared to the

meteor that exploded over Chelyabinsk,

Russia in February of 2013, that's quite small. That meteor's explosion shattered windows and injured 1,000 people.

See more videos, tweets and images below, and you can read a

liveblog of the event (with lots of links)

by Daniel Fischer (

@cosmos4u

).

Taken in Port Hope, ON at 4:20 pm. Looked like meteor exploding. Heard BOOM. Then rumble. Ground shook #meteorpic.twitter.com/RQfZ7r55Do — DC-Photography (@DCPhotographyON)

Here's the photo of the #meteor contrail over GTA and Durham! Saw this from Whitby.... Seeing this made my day pic.twitter.com/gINzrFeMc9 — Veronica (@iVeronica)

Sonic boom you felt. RT @island_gurl75: #meteor strikes or explodes near #Peterborough. We felt 4 big bangs, felt like a car hit the house! — Dënnis (@DennisOBrienJr)

Read more news reports at the

American Meteor Society

,

Globe and Mail

, and

Global News

.

Nancy Atkinson

Nancy Atkinson

Nancy Atkinson is a space journalist and author with a passion for telling the stories of people involved in space exploration and astronomy. She is currently retired from daily writing, but worked at Universe Today for 20 years as a writer and editor. She also contributed articles to The Planetary Society, Ad Astra (National Space Society), New Scientist and many other online outlets.

Her 2019 book, "Eight Years to the Moon: The History of the Apollo Missions,” shares the untold stories of engineers and scientists who worked behind the scenes to make the Apollo program so successful, despite the daunting odds against it. Her first book “Incredible Stories From Space: A Behind-the-Scenes Look at the Missions Changing Our View of the Cosmos” (2016) tells the stories of 37 scientists and engineers that work on several current NASA robotic missions to explore the solar system and beyond.

Nancy is also a NASA/JPL Solar System Ambassador, and through this program, she has the opportunity to share her passion of space and astronomy with children and adults through presentations and programs. Nancy's personal website is nancyatkinson.com