French scientists have confirmed that a dazzling ball of light that shot across the skies of Brittany late Sunday and landed with a thud was in fact a meteor.
The spectacle could also be seen from Normandy, southern England and the Channel Islands – with witnesses describing "sudden daylight” followed by an explosion.
Social media networks were flooded with images and footage of the event, which took place at on Sunday at 23:47 French time (21:47 GMT).
"I saw the meteor with its trail, a shooting star seen from very, very close,” Manon Choquet, a resident of the Breton city of Brest, told AFP.
“The light from the meteor was very bright with green reflections; it was magnificent."
One of the most impressive videos was captured by webcam of the Port of Arzal near Vannes.
Il s'agirait d'une météorite. L'objet lumineux est en tout cas bien visible sur la webcam du port et du barrage d'Arzal (#Morbihan), près de #Vannes #Bretagne pic.twitter.com/nMyz53Nq3i
— Nicolas Arzur (@NicolasArzur) September 5, 2021
Dozens of testimonies
With images captured by cameras in Normandy and Brittany, and dozens of testimonies reviewed by France’s Fripon skywatch project, experts were able to calculate the meteor’s trajectory.
Fripon has more than 100 cameras positioned throughout France, scanning the full 360 degrees of sky both day and night.
“The meteor came from the south, crossed Cornouaille, passing at the zenith of Morlaix and then finishing its course in the Channel," Priscilla Abraham, a scientist at the Spaces Sciences centre in Rennes, which works with the Fripon project, told AFP.
The meteor's size, however, was not immediately specified – although some astonomy club members in the UK speculated it may have been as small as a pea.
Explaining confusion over scientific terminology, Abraham said that once a meteor hits the ground, it then becomes known as a “meteorite”.
She also added that these sorts of events may be observed all year round, if you’re lucky enough.
