Viewers surprised by streaks of light in Downeast skies

The arrival of an annual meteor shower known as the Geminid surprised a lot of people in Maine and New Brunswick on Monday, December 10, when they saw streaks of bright light appearing to disappear into the sea near Point Lepreau.

Cindy Rossi, a dispatcher at the Regional Communications Center in Machias, says shortly after 5 p.m. she began receiving the first of many reports concerning mysterious lights. "We got numerous back-to-back calls about what looked like bright, reddish-orange flares or balls of fire. The state police in Orono and Calais 911 got them also. People thought it was a possible plane crash. One person said, 'I think it's the aliens.'" The calls were coming from a large geographical area, "from Jonesboro to Big Lake," she adds. "Anyone on a cell phone."

It's not known if there was also speculation about an early arrival of a jolly old elf in a sleigh pulled by eight tiny reindeer.

The Search and Rescue Coordination Center in Halifax, which had been alerted about the mysterious lights, later announced that the source was the Geminid meteor shower, something that Rossi and fellow employees had figured out from checking the Internet after the initial flurry of calls. The Halifax center had previously received a "Notice to Shipping," alerting it that the meteorites would be seen on December 10 in the Bay of Fundy off Point Lepreau at approximately 6 p.m. (ET).

"I saw some myself that night," reports Rossi. "They were beautiful."

"This one is pretty good. It's a fairly vast meteor shower," says amateur astronomer Charlie Sawyer of Pembroke. "There can be as many as 100 meteors per hour."

Sawyer points out that the word "meteor" means anything leaving a streak of light in the sky, and the Geminid was named for the constellation Gemini, from which it appears the meteors radiate. December 10 was a good date to see the Geminid meteor shower in eastern Maine and New Brunswick, but Sawyer reports the prime viewing of Geminid meteors in that area will be through Saturday, December 15, if the sky is not overcast. "The best time to watch is on or after midnight," he stresses. "As the earth rotates, we kind of crash into the stream. More friction causes more excitation."