On social media, some said they saw a fireball with a tail moving fast. Still others said they heard the sound of an explosion.
In New Brunswick, reports of this unexplained phenomenon are coming from Fredericton and surrounding communities such as McAdam, Stanley and Upper Kingsclear, and the Saint John area.
In the United States, the Machias Valley News Observer wrote Saturday that dozens of people had made similar sightings (New Window) in Washington County, east Maine.
metallic reflection
What I saw was a metallic sheen,” said Shawn Hamilton of Lincoln, New Brunswick.
He was on his tractor around 1pm on Saturday when he saw something in the sky coming from the south-southwest towards Rusagonis.
There was a tail that was also white and metallic. It was impressive to see. And it was very wide, he said.
The object was moving quickly and was only visible for a few seconds, Shawn Hamilton said. A few minutes later he claims to have heard a loud explosion.
Interview with Stéphane Picard in the Téléjournal Acadie, Sunday.
Photo: Radio Canada
Stéphane Picard, a member of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada and the Saint-Jean Astronomy Club, believes it’s likely a sonic boom, the sound wave created by the object’s speed, and not noise caused by the impact to the ground.
The astronomer did not have the opportunity to observe the phenomenon himself. He explains that this kind of thing happens very quickly and that we can mostly observe it by accident when we don’t know that an object will be visible.
It was a fairly clear day across the region, so it must have been significant enough to project enough light for us to see in the middle of the day, he said in an interview with Téléjournal.Acadia on Sunday.
Many possible explanations
Chris Curwin, an amateur astronomer from Saint-Jean, explains that identifying the phenomenon is difficult with the information available so far. It’s not an exact science, he said.
It can be a meteor or part of a satellite re-entering the Earth’s atmosphere.
Chris Curwin is an amateur astronomer.
Photo: Paul Owen
Hundreds of tons of space debris fall from the sky every day, he said. Thousands of fireballs, every day.
We don’t typically see this debris fall to Earth because it’s more likely to fall into an ocean, he points out.
Chris Curwin states that it is quite rare to see any of these phenomena in broad daylight, as was the case on Saturday. It must be something very shiny. A fireball is usually brighter than the planet Venus.
One of the first hypotheses to explain the Saturday phenomenon is the possibility that it is the Capella 4 satellite (Whitney).
This satellite was launched in January 2021 by a SpaceX Falcon 9 launch vehicle and was scheduled to reenter the atmosphere on April 8th.
The estimated time of re-entry was 11:49 am Atlantic time, but it is not exact. There is a margin of error of about nine hours, because when it starts re-entering the atmosphere we don’t know how it will behave, astronomer Stéphane Picard pointed out.
Many objects fall from the sky, says Stéphane Picard, and most are 10 centimeters or less in size. Most small debris breaks up in the atmosphere and doesn’t reach the ground, he says.
Based on information from Isabelle Leger (CBC) and Marie Andrée Leblond