If you caught video of a 'giant fireball' blazing through the sky, these meteor detectives want your help

Researchers at the University of Calgary are asking the public to share any images or video captured as a fiery meteor flew through Alberta skies last Wednesday in the hopes they can track down its landing site.

One video of the fireball taken at Sunshine Village in Banff National Park at 12:16 a.m. on Wednesday shows the blast of light change from white toa bright orange before it disappears over the Rocky Mountains.

• Watchthe meteorfall from multiple perspectives in the video above.

Lincoln Hanton, a research assistant with the department of geoscienceat the U of C,told CBC News thatwhen footage of a meteorsurfaceson the news or the internet, researchers will use landmarks fromthe images to calculate where it fell.

The meteorite streaks across the sky above Calgary homes

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Supplied by Rob Breugom

"We'll take measurements to the fireball off of a reference object so in some cases, you might havethe corner of a building in your photo, or a mountain peak, or stars. That really helps us to constrain exactly where the fireball fell," Hanton said.

The U of C research team is supervised by planetary scientist and professor Alan Hildebrand.

They got especially lucky with this fireball, Hanton said, becausephotographers attempting to capture the northern lights caught the meteorinstead.

What the researchers knowso far is that the meteorite fell near the Foothills west of Red Deer.

They will attempt to recover it quicklybecause meteorite samples can be eroded by weather, Hanton said, and estimate it was a few hundred kilograms in size when it hit the atmosphere.

Hanton said they don't yet know where the meteor came from, but says they should be able to tell with more analysis.

Not Sunshine's first meteor sighting

The research team initially saw the video captured at Sunshine Village on Twitter, and reached out to get a copy.

Kendra Scurfield, director of brand and communications atSunshine Village, said the ski resorthashad web cameras for years,but they are always upgrading so they can have better video resolution and catch moments like this.

"The sky's the limit for picking out the device if we can catch those guys off of it," she says.

The meteor over Sunshine Village

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This webcam footage captured by Sunshine Village is helping the researchers triangulate the meteor's location. Supplied by Sunshine Village.

She was exceptionally excited when she saw the video.

"It's just a giant fireball flying through the sky. It's pretty extraordinary to see something like that."

Sunshine's cameras recorded another meteor in 2017, which was also sent forthe University of Calgary topinpoint where it landed.

Meteor over trees

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Supplied by John Bright

"I think we're so blessed to live in a world as beautiful as ours here in the Canadian Rockies, and there's so much we don't know about our world," she said.

"So when you can capture items from space, it just gives us alittle more information to fully understand our natural environment."