Some people were treated to an astral spectacle late Wednesday night, as a "fireball meteor" flashed across the night sky in parts of Minnesota and Wisconsin.

WCCO viewer Diane Lloyd captured footage of the meteor over Sartell, Minnesota, at about 10:15 p.m.

About 150 miles northeast of Sartell, The Duluth Harbor Cam on Lake Superior also caught what may be the same meteor over the Aerial Lift Bridge.

The Neenah Fire Department in western Wisconsin also posted to social media about the awe-inspiring sight.

"Last night at 10:13 p.m., as Officer Brent Wittman was leaving the ThedaCare Neenah Emergency Department, a meteor was seen lighting up the evening sky," police said.

According to the American Meteor Society, there were nearly three dozen fireball reports in Minnesota on Wednesday between 10 p.m. and midnight, and more than 70 reports across Wisconsin.  

What is a "fireball meteor"?

The society defines a fireball meteor as "a very bright meteor" that's "about the same magnitude of the planet Venus in the morning or evening sky. A bolide is a special type of fireball which explodes in a bright terminal flash at its end, often with visible fragmentation."

NEXT Weather Meteorologist Adam Del Rosso said this isn't as uncommon as you'd think.

"Since most of the Earth is water, most never get observed. But with more cameras nowadays, we tend to catch them more," Del Rosso said. "They burn brighter since the rock/debris is a little larger than most meteors. Like other meteors, they usually burn up entirely in the atmosphere and don't leave any debris on the ground."

The society says there are several thousand fireball-magnitude meteors that reach Earth's atmosphere daily.

OK...but what's a meteor anyway?

Back in July, WCCO spoke with Thaddeus LaCoursiere of the Bell Museum, on the University of Minnesota's St. Paul campus. He said meteors come from comets, which consist of rock, dust and ice orbiting the sun. When comets get close to the sun, they heat up and form a fiery tail.

"The original starting point for these meteors that are coming from a meteor shower are generally from comets," LaCoursiere said. "That material in the comet's tail, it doesn't go back to [the comet]. It gets left behind."

LaCoursiere said when trying to watch a meteor shower, the first step is to look away from their point of origin.

"If I can find Capricorn in the sky, I face away from it because those meteors are going to come from behind my head, they're going to take a few seconds to enter the atmosphere, a few seconds to heat up, and so by the time we see them, we're looking opposite from where they came from," he said.

LaCoursiere also recommends getting away from light-polluted areas and finding the darkest sky possible for viewing. He also suggests letting your eyes adjust to darkness for 20 minutes before viewing, and warns that looking at your cellphone or another light source will then require another 20-minute adjustment period.