Glaswegians spotted what was described as a 'fireball' in the sky last night.
Over 200 reports of a mysterious 'shooting star' that flew across the skies above Scotland and Northern Ireland on Wednesday September 15.
The UK Meteor Network said it began receiving reports of a fireball being spotted at about 9pm on Wednesday, with the network adding it is “investigating to ascertain what the object was – meteor or space debris”.
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While the unidentified object remains to be confirmed, here's all you need to know about meteors.
What is a meteor?
According to NASA, meteors are objects in space and they can range in size from dust grains to small asteroids. Think of them as “space rocks." When they enter Earth's atmosphere, they can be spotted and known as shooting stars or fireballs.
What is a meteorite?
A meteorite is the name given to the meteor when the 'space rock' hits the ground if it survives its journey through the atmosphere.
When is the next meteor shower?
According to the Royal Museum of Greenwich, we can expect the next meteor shower between October 6-10, with the shooting stars more likely to be seen the brightest between October 8-9. The Draconids are Associated with Comet 21/P Giacobini-Zimmer.
On Wednesday, many took to social media with photos and videos of the fireball that flew above Glasgow.
Steve Owens, astronomer and science communicator at the Glasgow Science Centre, told BBC Radio Scotland’s Good Morning Scotland programme: “It was incredible. I was sitting in my living room at exactly 10 o’clock 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 added 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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