It could be one of the big three from the last century, the time period in which we started to measure the impact of meteors entering earth’s atmosphere.

And a Western University professor was one of the first to detect this latest visitor from space.

On Dec. 18 a meteor believed to be about 10 to 14 meters in diameter exploded about 25 kilometres above the Bering Sea.

Material would have plunged into the sea about 300 kilometres off the coast of Russia's Kamchatka Peninsula, but it’s unlikely anyone witnessed it.

Professor Peter Brown studies meteor physics at Western’s Department of Physics and Astronomy.

"You would have seen a second sun in the sky. It was, roughly, at local noon. But this was so much energy that was released it would have outshone the noon-day sun."

A week and a half ago, Brown was reviewing data from the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization, an agency which monitors seismic events around the world.

Brown’s research indicated a large blast over the Bering Sea on Dec. 18, "I immediately thought this must be a fireball, probably a pretty big one."

Oxford University meteorologist Simon Proud identified the fireball in images captured by Japan's Himawari Satellite. Proud also posted the images on his Twitter feed.

Brown says the speed of the meteor, an estimated 32 kilometres/second, and the angle at which it approached the earth made it somewhat unique.

Western Associate Professor Peter Wiegert has created animations which show the unique path the meteor had taken.

Its orbit around the sun was tilted about 47 degrees from that of the rotation of the planets and the asteroid belt from which it likely emerged.

"This one is, certainly, a little bit different from the others. So it's quite intriguing."

And, Brown says, in this case a slight rotation the earth made a significant difference.

“If the object had had the same path in the atmosphere, but had just come in four hours earlier, it actually would have come right over northern Alberta and, in fact, very near the city of Fort McMurray in Alberta.”

Brown says even though the force of explosion would be about 10 times the force of the Hiroshima nuclear blast, the impact on the ground would have likely been similar to the meteor event in Chelyabinsk, Russia in February of 2013.

In that case, no lives were lost but the air blast it created blew out windows and caused some structural damage to buildings.