Fiery streak in Maritime night sky Sunday likely rocket launch debris

For those lucky enough to look up Sunday evening near 6 p.m., a lengthy and fiery looking streak briefly lit up a portion of the dark sky.

I’ve had a number of reports and some video of the object sent in and shared over the last few days. I myself was lucky enough to see it as I was walking down to the Christmas parade in Bedford, N.S., Sunday evening.

My first thought was that it was a fireball -- a rocky meteor that hits the earth’s atmosphere and burns up.

There are after all several active meteor showers this time of the year.

I wanted some more information though, so I reached out to Robert Thacker of the Astronomy and Physics Faculty of Science with Saint Mary’s University.

He responded that: “There were 12 reported sightings of the event on the American Meteor Society fireball report page, but because it was moving comparatively slowly and breaking up fairly easily, this was likely a piece of space debris, i.e. an old satellite or piece of a rocket coming back down,” said Thacker.

“While it isn't always easy to associate a flight path of debris with events like this, a clever bit of sleuthing by local amateur astronomers has already linked it directly to the Rocket Lab launch from Nov. 4. Both the track prediction by the AMS and the ground track on aerospace.org coincide really well.”

So there you have it! Likely not a meteor at all but debris from a launch a few weeks ago and a hemisphere away.

Robert also noted that this may become a more frequent phenomenon.

“There are going to be more and more reported sightings of space debris in the next few years and confusing them with fireballs is likely going to be more common. It can sometimes be tricky to properly determine whether something is one or the other.”

“That said, there are good general guidelines: If something is moving fairly slowly across the night sky, being visible for 20 seconds, or more say, then you very likely have a piece of space debris. True fireballs usually come in much faster -- perhaps three or more times faster -- and are visible only for five seconds or so.”

I want to thank all those who sent in a report and media of the event some of which is included in this article.