A fireball lit up the sky over portions of the United States and Canada over the weekend.

The Minor Planet Center said the “fast moving object"impacted the Earth’s atmosphereat 3:27 a.m. over Brantford, Ontario on Saturday. After striking “in the skies above Niagara Falls” it became “a safe fireball,” according to the European Space Agency, which noted this marked the6th time in historythat an object in space was detected before making impact.

According toNASA,a fireball is “an unusually bright meteor.”

The space object — which received thetemporary designation #C8FF042from the ESA — was first detected in images taken at Mount Lemmon Survey near Tucson, Ariz., according to The Minor Planet Center.

The American Meteor Society said itreceived 59 reportsabout the fireball, which was spotted flying over portions of southern Canada as well as states like New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Maryland and Indiana.

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“When these things happen, the astronomy community wants to know where the impact took place and, if meteorites survived, they want to recover them as soon as possible,” Hankey told the outlet.

Saturday’s meteor spotting took place amid the Northern Taurids meteor shower, which has beenactive since Oct. 13, according to EarthSky.org.

This is just the sixth time that a meteor’s impact has been predicted, but the ESA said the capability to predict these events “is rapidly improving.”

Five other asteroids have been located prior to impact since 2008, including oneearlier this year, according to a previous press release from the agency.

New technology has allowed scientists to get a better look at the objects approaching Earth from space, per the March release. Additional “sky scanning telescopes” are on the way, as well, including what the ESA calls the “first state-of-the-art Flyeye telescope,” which will split images into 16 “subimages” to broaden its field of vision.

Detlef Koschny, ESA’s acting Head of Planetary Defence, said the new telescopes will give experts the ability to scour “a large area of the sky in just one night.”

“This will reduce the chance that we miss any interesting object,” Koschny said in March’s release, following the fifth-predicted meteor impact.

source: people.com