A huge green ‘meteor’ was spotted in the sky over Ireland last night spooking those who saw it.
The mysterious object was first spotted in Scotland at around 10pm last night before travelling towards Ireland.
Its trajectory appears to be from east to west, with people in Dublin, Donegal, Wexford, Armagh and Antrim among those reporting seeing it on social media.
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The UK Meteor Network say they have received more than 200 reports - the majority coming from Ireland and Scotland.
A number of spooked people captured the strange object on camera, including Joe McNeill from Antrim.
He told Belfast Live: “I was locking my car when I noticed a flash of light. At first, I thought it was a firework but noticed the change of colour and quickly realised what it was. Luckily I was able to capture it!
"At first I thought it was a firework, no noise and it didn't explode quickly so got my phone out. I saw it tracking across the sky. Thought it was a firework at first then realised what it was and was able to record it."
Taking to Twitter, one person wrote: "I just saw something streaking across the sky northwest direction from my living room - very very fast, above the clouds - it was green and leaving a trail. Anyone in Dublin see this? Like a meteorite only glowing green with red tint also."
Another person replied with a video they captured, saying: "Spotted in Bunclody, Wexford! Did you manage to shed any light on the situation? No really I do wanna know too."
Steve Owens, astronomer and science communicator at the Glasgow Science Centre, saw the fireball as it passed over Scotland.
He told BBC Radio Scotland’s Good Morning Scotland programme: “It was incredible, I was sitting in my living room at exactly 10pm last night and saw out of the window due south this brilliant fireball, this meteor streaking across the sky, and I could tell that it was something special because I could see through broken cloud, it wasn’t perfectly visible, I could see that it was fragmenting, breaking apart, there were little bits coming off it.
“And normally if you see a meteor or a shooting star they are just tiny little streaks of light, they last for a fraction of a second, this one was streaking across the sky for at least 10 seconds probably longer than that and it travelled from due south all the way across to the west so it was a pretty incredible sight.”
He said it is possible it could have landed but said it is “highly unlikely” 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 last night was bigger than a little bit of dust. The one last night 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.
“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.
“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, it looked to me like it was heading, it was certainly heading towards the west and 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.”
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