Bright, exploding fireball streaks across the sky over Northeast U.S.

© NASA/Bill Cooke via AMS

An image of the fireball from one of NASA’s fireball monitoring cameras. Mike Hankey from the American Meteor Society has annotated the image to point out the location of the fireball.

A bright fireball lit up the Northeast sky on Wednesday night as it streaked over southern Canada and upstate New York.

The fireball occurred at around 8:30 p.m. on Wednesday. The American Meteor Society estimates that the fireball began over Ontario County in northwest New York and traveled west-northwest over Canada before terminating southwest of Toronto.

"Many witnesses described an increasing intensity before it terminated," writes Mike Hankey of the American Meteor Society, "a common trait of bolide meteors." A bolide is a particularly bright meteor that explodes in a flash near the end of it's path.

© American Meteor Society

Estimated path of Wednesday night’s fireball.

Nearly 200 sightings have been reported on the society's website, from Detroit to central Massachusetts and south into the Mid-Atlantic.

The fireball was seen as far south as the D.C. region, where many of our followers on Twitter were lucky enough to be outside for the event.

@capitalweather Nice fireball seen from Frederick 8:26 pm falling to the north from high northeast.

- John Cosby (@JohnDCosby) December 4, 2014

@capitalweather Streak was pretty short, skipped a bit, then made one last green flash.

- DaveS (@darsal) December 4, 2014

@JustinWeather @capitalweather Saw a fireball in the sky about 10 min ago in Jessup/Columbia.

- Adam Minakowski (@minakowski) December 4, 2014

@capitalweather saw it from purcellville, VA. Was very bright and light from the tail lasted an extra second or two

- Tim Markey (@vizbridge) December 4, 2014

If you saw the fireball and you haven't yet reported it, you can do so here!