Parts of the province got an otherworldly visitor that flashed across the dark sky and it had a long journey to get there. A meteor over Ontario came all the way from the asteroid belt which is beyond Mars. Videos and pictures of the space object streaking through the night are spectacular. If you were in southern Ontario on January 21 and looked up just before 9:00 p.m. you might have seen a bright light streak across the night sky. That was a meteor fireball that was likely the size of a softball. It flashed overhead just to the north of Goderich and was spotted by people from hundreds of kilometres away. Reports about the fireball were sent in from southern Ontario, Michigan, Wisconsin, New York and Ohio. Peter Brown, a meteor scientist from Western University, posted videos on Twitter of the celestial object lighting up the sky. This visitor from outer space lit up about 80 kilometres above the ground and started just east of the Ontario town. It eventually fizzled out north of the town, about 30 kilometres above Lake Huron. Based on the path it took through the atmosphere, Brown was able to trace its origin back to the asteroid belt which is just beyond Mars. If any small meteorites actually fell from the sky, they likely ended up in the lake. Kintail fireball from Jan 22 as captured early in flight by accident on @westernu most sensitive meteor cameras which use EMCCDs from @nuvucameras. FOV is roughly 15x15 degrees and faintest visible stars are near +12. @amsmeteors @IMOmeteors #fireball #Meteorite pic.twitter.com/exv1OqHPr4— Peter Brown (@pgbrown) January 23, 2020 Yet another capture of the Kintail fireball, this time with an experimental meteor camera system near Tavistock, ON based on https://t.co/JMV1A8Nciu @westernu @IMOmeteors @amsmeteors #fireball #toomanymeteorcameras pic.twitter.com/ZVtQ3aOqd0— Peter Brown (@pgbrown) January 23, 2020 A meteor is a streak of light across the sky that happens when space rocks, known as "meteoroids" enter Earth's atmosphere. Since this flash was intense enough to rival the brightness of Venus, it's called a fireball. Usually, cameras set up to shoot events like this only capture black and white but two of them actually caught this streak changing colours as it flashed through the sky. In both photos, you can see the fireball change from red to white to blue and back to red again. Still image of Kintail fireball last night as seen from Collingwood Observatory of @TCObs pic.twitter.com/gyr1wDthTc— Peter Brown (@pgbrown) January 22, 2020 Still image of Kintail fireball from Elginfield Observatory as captured by @FireballsSky DFN camera last night. @amsmeteors @FireballsSky pic.twitter.com/ClTBr3M96d— Peter Brown (@pgbrown) January 22, 2020 The colour of the space rock could be based on what it's made of, the flow of air around it, the speed it travelled at or how it broke apart. The asteroid belt is between 179.5 and 329 million kilometres away from Earth. So this little guy travelled a long way to flash across the sky over southern Ontario. * Cover photo used for illustrative purposes only.