Many early risers looking skyward this morning, spotted a ball of fire streaking across the sky over the Montreal region. 

The CJAD and Astral newsroom received calls from places as widely seperated as St-Constant on the south shore, Two Mountains, and Laval. There were also calls from Boucherville, Saint-Laurent, and Ile-Perrot.

Claude Comeau called from Ile-Perrot to describe what he saw.

"I took it as when you see fireworks, and the spark lands towards the ground, but I didn't think anything of it."

Another caller described it as a white comet with a blue tail.

So what was it?

Andrew Fazekas, spokesman for the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada, also known as the "night sky guy" tells CJAD news it had to be a meteor.

"While most meteors tend to be the size of a grain of sand, what we know as shooting stars, this one was probably anywhere from the size of a basketball or a living room sofa."

And while shooting stars can be spotted every 15 minutes or so on a clear night, what we saw this morning is rare.

photo courtesy of wikipedia