A ball of fire crosses the sky in Ontario, a stunning view captured on camera

Videos appeared on Twitter capturing the moment a fireball was seen flying through the night sky in Ontario, Canada on November 19. The meteor, dubbed C8FF042, was about a meter in diameter, according to the European Space Agency (ESA).

“A ~1m space object – temporary designation #C8FF042 – strikes Earth over Canada creating a stunning #fireball,” the agency wrote on Twitter on Saturday morning. The agency also said this is only the sixth time in history that a global asteroid warning has caught the object “before impact”. Since 2008, five other objects have been detected in space before hitting Earth, according to ESA.

”For only the 6th time global #asteroid warning systems saw it before impact, alerting #PlanetaryDefence experts where and when. ‘Only ‘6x, but this ability is improving rapidly,’ the agency wrote. In Toronto, the meteor was captured by Earth Cam’s “Tower View” camera. People have also reported hearing a loud “boom” upon impact.

Watch the video here:

Space object ~1-m – temporary designation #C8FF042 – hits the Earth above Canada, creating stunning #fireball☄️

For only the 6th time in history, this impact has been predicted.

Learn more about prediction #asteroid impacts from the last time this happened 👉https://t.co/zwPKXeUEUlhttps://t.co/XbDqtiDuompic.twitter.com/5yHGWibSki

— ESA Operations (@esaoperations) November 19, 2022

The meteor entered Earth’s atmosphere around 3:27 a.m. EST (1:57 p.m. EST) Saturday over Brantford, Ont., the Minor Planet Center, which tracks objects in the solar system, said, according to a New York Times report. The fast-moving object, which has the temporary designation of #C8FF042, was detected in images taken at the Mount Lemmon Survey near Tucson, Arizona, the Minor Planet Center added.

An object <1m hit🌍in the sky above Niagara Falls, becoming a vault #fireball. For the sixth time only, the world #asteroid warning systems saw it before impact, alerting #PlanetaryDefense experts where and when. ‘Only’ 6x, but this ability improves quickly#AsteroidImpact☄️ https://t.co/PMZi5f0m9q

— ESA Operations (@esaoperations) November 19, 2022

The New York Times The report further states that Mike Hankey, the director of operations for the American Meteor Society, received a call about the meteor around 4 a.m. EST from someone in Germany. Hankey, who was in Maine at the time, said messages about the meteor started circulating about three hours earlier. “When these things happen, the astronomical community wants to know where the impact took place and, if the meteorites survived, they want to recover them as soon as possible,” Hankey said.

A fireball is a meteor usually brighter than the planet Venus in the morning or evening sky, depending on the American Meteor Society. The last time a meteor was detected before impact was in March, according to the ESA, when an object first detected in Hungary struck near Greenland.