Donna Milne didn't know what she was seeing as she watched a ball of fire move through the sky at about 10:30 Monday night.

Initially, she feared it was an airplane engulfed in flames.

The front window of her home in Crestview overlooks the Yukon River Valley.

Milne often watches aircraft on their final approach to the Erik Nielsen Whitehorse International Airport.

The ball of fire appeared to be moving at the speed of an aircraft on final, though it maintained its speed and wasn't losing altitude – not what you would expect from an aircraft on fire.

Unable to immediately get her husband's attention, Milne ran for her purse to grab her camera, shut off the lights and TV, and snapped a photo.

She now believes what she saw was a meteorite burning up in the Earth's atmosphere, though she hasn't been able to get any information to verify her belief.

Milne estimates the incident lasted about 15 seconds.

"It was about 10:35 when I calmed down, and got on the phone with my neighbours,” she said.

They had seen nothing.

The fireball was travelling north to south, moving across the window towards the downtown, in the direction of Marsh Lake.

Milne called her parents at Marsh Lake, wondering if they'd seen anything. Nothing.

On Tuesday morning, inquiries to the airport control tower also turned up nothing.

Milne remembers the morning of Jan. 18, 2000, when the internationally famous Tagish Lake meteor burned across the sky over southern Yukon in spectacular fashion.

From her window at work, Milne remembers the vivid light show back then, though she didn't actually see the meteor.

So she's thinking by sharing her story about Monday night, she might hear from somebody else who saw the fireball.

"I can't imagine that nobody else saw it, or that the tower didn't see it,” she said, emphasizing how visible it was from her front window, for long enough for her to get a picture.

Prof. Brett Gladman of the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of British Columbia said this morning meteor events are common.

Some like last February's meteor, which landed in Russia, or the Tagish Lake meteor, are large enough to leave a bright flash detectable by satellite, he said.

Gladman said medium-sized meteors can be detected by sound equipment but most are of a smaller size and are not measurable from the ground.

As a member of the national Meteorites and Impact Advisory Committee, Gladman hadn't heard of any other reports of Monday's event until this morning.

So he suspects that if Milne witnessed a meteor, it was likely of the smaller variety, as bright as it may have been.

It's also possible what she saw was a low-altitude, Earth orbiting satellite, said the professor.