Scientists say they are searching for remnants of a meteor that brilliantly lit up the sky before breaking into pieces that may have fallen to earth in western Canada.
University of Calgary planetary scientist Alan Hildebrand called it one of the largest meteors visible in the country in the last decade.
Widely broadcast video images showed what appeared to be a speeding fireball Thursday night over Saskatoon that became larger and brighter before disappearing as it neared the ground.
Hildebrand said Friday that he received about 300 email reports from witnesses.
"It would be something like a billion-watt light bulb," said Hildebrand, who also co-ordinates meteor sightings with the Canadian Space Agency.
Tammy Evans was wakened by her 10-year-old daughter who ran into the bedroom of their home in North Battleford, Saskatchewan.
"She said there was a flash of light, the house shook twice and it sounded like dinosaurs were walking," Evans, a nurse, said.
Hildebrand suspects the meteor broke up into pieces and he plans to investigate an area around Macklin, Saskatchewan, near the Alberta border.
Rick Huziak, an amateur astronomer in Saskatoon, helped operate a camera on top of the University of Saskatchewan physics building that captured video of the meteor.
Although the camera records one every two to three weeks, this meteor was among the brightest seen in Canada in the last dozen years, he said.
"It was quite spectacular. The ground lights up all over the place," he said.
Martin Beech, an associate professor of astronomy at the University of Regina, said meteorites are valuable to learning about the history of the solar system.
"Picking up a meteorite is almost equivalent to doing a space exploration mission between Mars and Jupiter," he said.
Huziak said most meteors burn up completely after entering the Earth's atmosphere, but one in a thousand actually drop meteorites that hit the ground.
The biggest meteorite fall occurred northeast of Edmonton near the town of Bruderheim in 1960. More than 700 fragments were recovered that totalled 300 kilograms.
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