What was that in the sky?

I have been following the news reports about the meteor that was seen on Thursday evening November 20 in the skies across Saskatchewan and Alberta. Elaine's parents were driving near Canwood that evening and said the whole sky lit up brightly. The video below shows the meteor as seen near Edmonton. It is thought the meteor shattered into pieces and came down somewhere near the Alberta - Sask border.



CBC also had a video of the meteor as seen from Biggar SK.


Popular Science had an interesting article about the science of "shooting stars." Most people think the bright light is from the meteor glowing from the heat of friction in the atmosphere. But is is actually a process called adiabatic compression. The extreme compression of the air around the meteor causes the gasses to heat and glow brightly. The meteor would be travelling about 30,000 mile per hour heating the compressed air in front of it to 3000 F. (Sorry I didn't do the metric conversion from the US article. )

Now hoards of meteor seekers have descended on the area looking for pieces of the rock.

Update November 28: Scientists estimate that it was an asteroid weighing 10 tonnes and the size of a desk. It broke up into many pieces over a 20 square km area south of Lloydminster. It is a good thing something that large did not come down in one piece.