Streak across Vancouver Island skyline might have been large meteor -- or not Balam originally speculated that the fireball was a piece of falling, man-made space debris. But he said space junk generally makes a much more brief appearance in the sky. That suggests the light people saw could have been a satellite decaying and burning up as it entered the Earth's atmosphere, he said.
Many a lucky star-gazer on Vancouver Island and the Lower Mainland watched an impressive white streak of light trail across the dark blue sky Saturday night, but Victoria astronomers are stumped as to what caused the light show. Around 8 p.m., the brilliant white flash could be seen heading westward for 12 seconds, said Dave Balam, an astronomer and telescope operator at the Dominion Astrophysical Observatory in Saanich.
Bright light in sky was meteor: astronomer A meteor was likely the source of a flash of light seen shooting across the sky on B.C.'s South Coast Saturday night, a local astronomer says. David Dodge said most meteoroids burn up before they enter Earth's atmosphere and become meteors with their distinctive trail of light.
What looked like an unusually dramatic shooting star with a double-flared tail streaked across the skies over the Lower Mainland at around 8 p.m. on Saturday. Source
Was Vancouver light show a meteor or space junk? It wasn't a bird and it wasn't a plane. Was it a meteor? At approximately 8 p.m. Saturday night, a great, big ball of yellowy-white light streaked from east to west across the darkening sky.