Meteor spotted over Manitoba sky this weekend

WINNIPEG -

A handful of lucky Manitobans caught a glimpse of a rare sighting on Saturday nwhile looking up at the sky – a meteor.

According to Scott Young, the planetarium astronomer at the Manitoba Museum, about half a dozen reports of a bright meteor called a fireball came in from southwestern Manitoba.

Though it didn't hit the ground, a trail of smoke could be seen in the sky.

"It was really, really bright," Young said.

"It left a smoke train behind it, and there were some people who even reported a sonic boom a minute or two after the event. It's not just your typical falling star kind of thing. This is a larger object that came into the atmosphere, blew up and people were able to see it from all the way down here on the ground."

Young noted that these types of events happen many times a day all around the world. However, he said, they are only visible for a couple of hundred kilometres and happen within seconds.

"Most people go their whole lives without ever seeing one, so if you did see this event, you should count yourself lucky because they are pretty rare for an individual to see unless you spend a really large amount of time staring at the sky," he said.

Young noted people should report their sightings to the International Meteor Organization in order to help them determine the exact path of the meteor.

"With enough reports, we can figure out where any pieces might have come down and that's of course where people would look for meteorites, which are quite valuable and rare and a fun thing to go looking for," he said.

- With files from CTV's Michael D'Alimonte.