For a few brief moments on Wednesday, a bright fireball lit up the predawn skies near Mexico City. The display awed residents and online viewers alike as videos of the object quickly spread.

The glowing object was a bolide, according to The Associated Press. Bolides are fireballs that explode in a bright flash, often with visible fragmentation, according to the American Meteor Society.

Whereas a meteorite is a space rock that reaches the ground, a bolide is “just the luminous phenomenon” associated with the object’s atmospheric entry, said Jérôme Gattacceca, the editor of The Meteoritical Bulletin of the Meteoritical Society, an organization that records all known meteorites.

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