Social media was abuzz last night after a bright flash lit up the night sky.

Just before 9:30 p.m., people from across Manitoba began making posts on social media about a green light. The streaking fireball could be seen as far away as Fort Frances, Ontario, where Robert Perreault captured the above video on his security camera.

Vi Hancock was driving to St. Anne when she says she was overtaken by the flash.

"It was extremely bright. I thought someone had their high beams on. It was so bright that I couldn't see anything for one quick second, and next thing I know, the light moved enough that I could see it going down at an angle," says Hancock.

"It was spectacular. It had a huge white tail to it. It was extremely long. It also looked like it had diamonds at the end of it. It went slow but quick. Then I saw it go boom," she adds.

According to Scott Young, Manager of Planetarium and Science Gallery at the Manitoba Museum, it was a bolide.

"Basically the much, much brighter cousin of a typical meteor or falling star. So, basically a chunk of rock from outer space, maybe the size of a basketball, in this case, that crashed into the atmosphere of the earth. The friction of the passage through the atmosphere just heats it up and vapourizes it into a flash of light," said Young.

Young says bolides are fairly common. There is usually one a day somewhere in the world, but most of them go unreported.

He is encouraging anyone who may have witnessed this specific flash to report it.

"We have set up some stuff on our website at manitobamuseum.ca. There is a link on the front that will take you to the report form. Just fill out the details, of where you were and what you saw. All of that gets put together on a map that helps us figure out where the object may have come down. It also helps us work backwards to figure out where in the solar system it came from," says Young.

He says the event was seen over a wide area of Manitoba, Minnesota, Northwestern Ontario and Wisconsin.