A massive meteor has exploded over Earth, and observers looking at the night sky in Yellowknife -- a small town in Canada's Northwest territories -- took photos of what was later described as a "fireball." 

According to Yahoo! News, even those who are used to seeing the daily beauty of the Aurora Borealis were taken aback by the view of the fireball that happened last night. The explosion happened around 4 a.m. EST, and happened thanks to a meteoroid -- which was likely around the size of a basketball -- entered Earth's atmosphere and "superheated," causing a bright streak to be left in its wake.

Still, while it was definitely beautiful to watch, there's really nothing to worry about: according to scientists interviewed by Yahoo!, even if the small meteroid would have hit the Earth, it was way to small to cause any real damage, and the fact that it was over a relatively remote area of Canada (in other words, an area that's not heavily populated) meant that it was unlikely to cause any casualties in the first place.

According to the International Business Times, while such an occurrence is newsworthy to those of us who aren't lucky enough to live near the Aurora Borealis, such occurrences are actually quite common in the area, especially around that time. NASA speculates that this is the season where meteoroids, and their observances, increase by as much as 30 percent.

"If it was a meteor it was probably a pretty good-sized one to be as bright as it was," Richard Miles, with the Science Center of Iowa, told the site. "It could also be some space debris. Anything that goes through our atmosphere from outer space is going to be going at pretty intense speeds and that's going to cause a lot of friction, cause a lot of heat, and that's what causes the glowing that you see as a meteorite or debris burning up in the atmosphere."