A huge fireball streaking across the night sky above Birmingham has been caught on camera.
Birmingham Astronomical Society’s sensitive equipment alerted members to the phenomenon at 2.14am on Monday, May 6.
The group's camera, on the 10th floor of Aston University’s main building, captured the fireball racing through the sky, before disappearing again.
On film, it appears doughnut shaped, but it is believed this is an illusion caused by blinding brightness partially blocking the camera’s sensitive equipment.
The society said the piece of space rock exploded on the east coast, close to The Wash.
But more information is needed to plot the fireball’s precise course and discover exactly where in space it came from.
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More details are vital for those monitoring Near Earth Objects – rocks that could hit Earth and wreak havoc.
Society members hopes others may have filmed the celestial event, perhaps without realising it.
They hope the firework display, high in the firmament, was accidentally caught on security cameras.
John Young, meteor detection co-ordinator at BAS, told Birmingham Live : “The data we have captured so far is invaluable but the more information we can add, the better our understanding of this event.
“Does anyone have a security camera that points approximately East/South East from Birmingham that may have captured this? Was this occurrence visually observed in person? We would love to hear from you.”
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John, 69, believes the object was no bigger than a grape, - a white-hot grape hurtling at 44 miles per second.
He added for comparison that he Chelyabinsk meteor, which exploded over Russia’s southern Ural region in 2013, was the size of a campervan.
In all, 1,500 people were injured and 7,200 buildings in six cities damaged.
The society is a member of UKMON UK Meteor Monitoring Network, which shares information on sightings.
The Birmingham fireball is the society’s first major find since it launched its own Meteor Detection Project.
