A brilliant flash of bright meteor flying at 48,000kph sped across UK skies on Sunday night.
Hundreds of people from Ireland to the Netherlands also reported sightings of the meteor. In the UK, it was seen from Somerset in south-west England to Scotland in the north.
Videos shared on social media showed the bright object fly across the sky.
@UKMeteorNetwork doorbell cam Milton Keynes pic.twitter.com/TQ8lCcYqdO
— Ivor Lafford (@Lafford_MK) February 28, 2021
The UK Meteor Network described it as a fireball, which, like a meteor, is space rock entering the atmosphere, but fireballs are brighter than regular meteors.
The UK Fireball Alliance (UKFall), which is led by staff at the Natural History Museum, said there had been more than 750 reports on the International Meteor Organisation's website.
"The video recordings tell us its speed was about 30,000 miles per hour, which is too fast for it to be human-made space junk, so it's not an old rocket or satellite," said UKFall's Dr Ashley King.
"The videos also allowed us to reconstruct its original orbit around the Sun. In this case, the orbit was like an asteroid's.
"This particular piece of asteroid spent most of its orbit between Mars and Jupiter, though sometimes it got closer to the Sun than Earth is," Dr King added.
Fantastic footage of last night's #fireball from Ben Stanley's https://t.co/eAMviWBAAV / https://t.co/1wOo3FHJ2u meteor camera in Nuneaton. (People, buy this camera!) The fireball may have dropped meteorites in Gloucestershire. @amsmeteors @UKMeteorNetwork @trilby pic.twitter.com/Q8XqkeopDC
— SCAMP - a component of the FRIPON network (@SCAMP_Meteors) March 1, 2021
UKFall said although the meteor broke up in the atmosphere it is likely “a few fragments” reached the ground.
