Astronomers say they have found a meteorite fragment the size of a golf ball near Hamilton, which they believe streaked across the night sky above Southern Ontario in late September.

The small space rock came to rest in an SUV in Grimsby, Ont., after smashing through the vehicle's windshield.

Yvonne Garshinsky heard about the meteorite through media reports. She realized it may have been related to a strange rock that damaged her vehicle the night of Sept. 25. So she contacted the university.

"My son thought that there was something unusual about (the rock). He just couldn't put his finger on it," she told reporters on Friday. "So he kept it."

Astronomers at the University of Western Ontario in London have confirmed that they had indeed found a piece of the meteorite.

Experts at the university's astronomy department have been searching for such fragments. They recorded the meteorite's fiery descent using a network of cameras across southern Ontario that constantly scans the skies. When it was first spotted above Guelph, Ont., they believe it was moving at about 20 kilometres per second and was the size of a child's tricycle.

They released a video of the meteorite's fall, which was posted on YouTube and has been viewed nearly 25,000 times. They also posted a map of the meteorite's path on the university's website, hoping that it would help the public to uncover or identify fragments.

A search team was also established and has been scouring a 12-kilometre area where pieces, perhaps as large as a football, may have landed.

It's rare that astronomers are able to record a meteorite's fall. But in this case, astronomers say they will be able to use video, photo, radar and infrasound records of its descent to calculate how much energy it released entering the atmosphere.

"We can also figure out where it came from and how it got here, which is rare," said Phil McCausland, a postdoctoral fellow at UWO's planetary science centre, in a statement. "In all of history, only about a dozen meteorite falls have that kind of record."

Anyone who believes they have found meteorite fragments can contact McCausland at the University of Western Ontario.

With a report from CTV Toronto's Michelle Dube