A mysterious fireball seen shooting shooting across the night sky, lighting up the Irish countryside as if it was daylight, has been captured on camera.
According to the Irish Mirror at around 10:10 pm on Sunday night a huge ‘fireball’ was seen right across the country, lighting up all of the island like daylight for about 5 seconds.
The blast of light was so visible that the Irish Coast Guard at Valentia Island, Co Kerry contacted Astronomy Ireland because they were receiving so many reports of possible distress flares.
David Moore from Astronomy Ireland said, “This event was so bright that a piece or pieces may have survived the re-entry.”
This event was so bright that a piece or pieces may have survived the re-entry and landed as extremely rare and valuable meteorites (…) we are appealing to everyone who saw the fireball to fill in to online report form on Astronomy Ireland’s website ‘astronomy.ie’ as soon as possible while the details are fresh in their minds. In return we will send everyone our analysis of all the reports and where we think any meteorite may have landed.
Yahoo News UK reports, these fireballs are caused when a large rock from space burns up in the atmosphere as it collides with Earth at speeds of the order of 100,000 mph, causing a huge explosion equivalent to thousands of pounds of high-explosive.
The clip, posted below, was uploaded to youtube by the UK Meteor Observation Network and shows the massive dash of light fly across the sky at Portadown, Co. Armagh.
Astronomy Ireland are appealing to any companies who operate CCTV cameras to check their recordings for Sunday night around 10:10 pm to see if they recorded the fireball near the horizon as photographic records like this are extremely valuable.
