The observations were analysed in detail, later the same year, by the astronomer Clarence Chant, leading him to conclude that as all accounts were positioned along a great circle arc, the source had been a small, short-lived natural satellite of the Earth.

The evening of February 9 was cloudy across much of the densely populated northeast United States, meaning that some 30 million potential observers were for the most part unaware of the phenomenon.

[8] Nevertheless, more than a hundred individual reports – largely from more remote areas of Canada – were later collected by Clarence Chant, with additional observations unearthed by later researchers.

They were throwing out a constant stream of sparks and after they had passed they shot out balls of fire straight ahead that travelled more rapidly than the main bodies.

[11] One curious feature of the reports, highlighted by Mebane, was that several appeared to indicate a second meteor procession on the same course around 5 hours later, although the Earth's rotation meant that there was no obvious mechanism to explain this.

[15] O'Keefe later suggested that the meteors, which he referred to as the "Cyrillids", could have in fact represented the last remnant of a circumterrestrial ring, formed from the ejecta of a postulated lunar volcano.