Fireball explodes over Yellowknife

A fireball exploded and lit up the skies over Yellowknife early Thursday morning, but was not believed to have caused any damage.

One expert compared it to a similar incident that took place over Montreal last November.

An image of the explosion was posted on the website of Spaceweather.com. It was captured by a photographer who was leading a tour of the Aurora Borealis.

The exploding meteor was described as being so bright that it turned the night sky blue.

Peter Brown, a physics professor at Western University in London, Ont., viewed the photo of the bright fireball, which he calculated was less than one metre in size.

He told The Canadian Press the fact that there was an explosion meant the object had probably penetrated deep into the atmosphere.

But Brown said that he was almost certain the explosive force was too weak to cause any damage.

He added that the view of an exploding fireball is something that people might only see once a year.

The Western University physics professor noted the meteor that exploded over the skies of Montreal in November 2013 created a thundering boom, but it also shook houses.

The two fireballs over Yellowknife and Montreal paled in comparison to what happened over Chelyabinsk, Russia just over a year ago.

That's when a meteor estimated to be about 10 tons exploded over the Ural Mountains on Feb. 15, 2013 with the force of an atomic bomb.

The sonic blasts from that fireball shattered windows and injured about 1,000 people.