Scotland and North England residents were fascinated after spotting a meteorite “bigger than anything ever seen [before]” gliding through the sky. The event, according to residents, was both unbelievable and stunning.
The UK Meteor Network confirmed the meteorite’s appearance and noted that they received more than two hundred reports of “a fireball spotted” at 10 p.m. on Wednesday.
The phenomenon identified as otherworldly was captured on cameras. A brightly-lit object flying at a downward angle and followed by a huge tail was visible.
In a viral video, a Twitter user said, “Did I legit just see a shooting star in Motherwell or is that something crashing out [of] the sky?”
“At first, I thought it was a firework, no noise and it didn’t explode quickly [, so I] got my phone out…are we due any meteor showers or anything?” another asked.
Upon sharing a video on Twitter, several comments instantaneously followed out of different locations.
The possibility of Meteorite landing in Scotland
Steve Owens, astronomer and science communicator at the Glasgow Science Centre, said it is possible the meteorite could have landed but added it is “highly unlikely” that it landed in Scotland.
He said: “Normally these tiny little streaks of light, these little shooting stars, they all burn up and everything just vanishes and evaporates in the atmosphere, but the thing…was bigger than a little bit of dust.”
It “might have been the size of a golf ball or maybe a cricket ball, maybe bigger than that, so it’s certainly not impossible that bits could have landed,” Owens said.
“It looked like it was travelling a fair distance, as these things do, and it was fairly flat across the sky as I saw it,” he added.
Owens believes it was heading towards the west and says that “given that people in Northern Ireland were reporting seeing it, it could well have passed over land and ended up in the Atlantic, but it’s certainly not impossible that it landed—finding it will be the challenge.”
Meteorite bigger than anything ever seen
The fireball hurtling through the sky in the distance was also captured by CCTV camera footage in Linlithgow, West Lothian in Scotland.
Some users who physically witnessed the astronomical sighting said they had never seen anything like it before.
“I just saw it in Glasgow around 10 pm!! Never seen anything like it!”
“Me and my 2 daughters saw the meteor, it was unbelievable but one of my younger daughters was terrified,” said another.
“We are investigating to ascertain what the object was—a meteor or space debris,” the UK Meteor Network, a group with a network of 170 detection cameras recording meteors and fireballs over the UK, said.
Mr. Owens said, “The UK Meteor Network, which has had hundreds of reports from around Scotland and further afield, is going to be able to triangulate all of those reports to work out its trajectory.”
Just a month ago, officials in Utah in the US said a loud boom followed by a few seconds of rumbling was heard across the region. This was likely caused by a meteor crash.
