A bright meteor has been sighted streaking above Britain, with some witnesses describing the event as a blue and green flash.
Sightings of the fireball from space were reported in locations including London, Hampshire, Stafford and on the east coast of England, with some naming it the St Patrick’s Day meteor because of its colour.
Video footage from the UK Meteor Observation Network, an astronomers’ organisation, captured the moment it streaked across the sky in the early hours of Thursday.
UKMON said: “Very large fireball reported by public was first noticed by our Church Crookham station at 3:16 this morning.
“It momentarily overloaded the camera with light and with second video we will be able to triangulate and calculate the orbit soon.”
It is reported to be the biggest fireball sighting recorded by UKMON, and is estimated to have a brightness of -7 magnitude and explosion magnitude of -14 mag.
Paul Gilbert posted a video on Twitter capturing the vivid blue meteor lighting the sky up in Battersea, south-west London.
Video caught from #London #sky tonight #Battersea @LBC pic.twitter.com/evfnLqHQ9i
— Paul Gilbert (@PaulGilbertDj) March 17, 2016
The word meteor describes the process of a meteoroid – a body of dust and rocky or metallic particles travelling through space – burning up in the Earth’s atmosphere and resulting in the huge flashes, or “shooting star”, we see.
When a meteoroid survives the entry through the Earth’s atmosphere and crashes, it becomes a meteorite.
