GREAT FALLS — Many people across Montana saw a bright light streaking across the sky early on Wednesday, November 13, 2024.
The American Meteor Society (AMS) says it has received hundreds of reports from people in Montana, Idaho, Washington, North Dakota, Oregon, and Western Canada.
According to the AMS, "fireball" is another term for a very bright meteor, generally brighter than magnitude -4, which is about the same magnitude of the planet Venus in the morning or evening sky.
A bolide is a special type of fireball which explodes in a bright terminal flash at its end, often with visible fragmentation.
The organization says that several thousand meteors of fireball magnitude occur in the Earth’s atmosphere each day: "The vast majority of these, however, occur over the oceans and uninhabited regions, and a good many are masked by daylight. Those that occur at night also stand little chance of being detected due to the relatively low numbers of persons out to notice them."
A similar incident happened back in May 2024:
