Meteor creates a burst of excitement as it streaks across the UK

A FIREBALL meteor streaking across the sky caused this spectacular image as it passed a “Global Rainbow” laser display on Tyneside at the weekend.

The meteor provoked a frenzy of excitement, with some astronomers saying they would never forget the sighting.

Witnesses reported seeing a large fireball travelling from northern Scotland to southern England at about 9:40pm on Saturday.

A spokesman for Strathclyde Police said the force had been inundated with calls about a bright object in the sky, and the Grampian force said reports of people seeing a “flare or a bright object with a tail” were received from across the region.

Dumfries and Galloway Constabulary said numerous calls were made about a “large ball of fire in the sky” across Annandale and Eskdale, and Lothian and Borders Police received “quite a lot” of calls.

Gary Fildes, director at Kielder Observatory in Northumberland said he was with a group of people who went “absolutely mental” when they saw the meteor and asked him if it was “going to end life on Earth”.

The Met Office tweeted: “Hi all, for anyone seeing something in the night sky, we believe it was a meteorite.”

Mr Fildes was hosting a seminar on the Northern Lights for 40 people, when they spotted the fireball and watched it for 30 to 40 seconds. “We got an incredible view. It was phenomenal,” he said.

Mr Fildes, an astronomer for 30 years, added: “I’ve never seen anything like that in my life.” He described the experience as “one I’ll never forget as long as I live”, but said it would be difficult to determine where it came from.

Adrian West, of Meteorwatch, said he spotted the meteor in Berkshire and believed it could have gone down in the English Channel or the Bay of Biscay.

“It had a very bright orange nucleus and a green tail,” he said.

Meteors are particles from space that burn up in a streak of light as they enter the Earth’s atmosphere, whereas meteorites are larger objects that survive the trip and reach the surface of the Earth.

Dr David Whitehouse, an author and astronomer, said: “Judging by its brightness, it may have been large enough to survive and hit the ground, but until people work out its trajectory we won’t have any idea where it might have come down.”

Dr Whitehouse said the object was about the size of a fist and had “probably come from somewhere between Mars and Jupiter and has been in space for thousands of millions of years”.