Star-gazers around Herefordshire were left agog when a meteor 'exploded' above the county last night.
Mateusz Matuszekski was among those to see the explosion, and captured this picture of the meteor in Kington.
He said: "Smoke trail left behind the meteor that burnt up and exploded in the atmosphere above Herefordshire tonight."
The UK Meteor Network has now provided an explanation of what caused the phenomenon – and people weren't too far off the mark.
The group tweeted: "Looks like a lot of people in the UK and Ireland saw the 9:55 #fireball #meteor. The reports are flooding in, 120 so far and counting.
"From the two videos we saw it was a slow moving meteor with clearly visible fragmentation."
The UK Meteor Network confirmed the "explosion" people reported seeing was a slow-moving meteor fireball.
A spokesman for the Network said: "A fireball meteor is space debris moving through space at incredible speeds. As it encounters resistance from our Atmosphere, it is forced to slow down. This process creates heat, and light is what we see in the night sky.
"We received almost 800 witness reports and videos from doorbell and dashboard cameras from witnesses right across the UK. Surprisingly many people reported hearing either a sonic boom or a rumbling noise.
"Moving relatively slow, compared to other fireballs and meteors we seen in past, it is still moving faster than anything human-made. We think it was a softer cemetery or asteroidal material, and there is a definite fragmentation in the second half of the flight.
"There is a good chance some material survived the entry and might be found on the ground."
The fireball that lit up the skies over the UK on Sunday night is likely to have been a small piece of an asteroid entering the Earth’s atmosphere, scientists have said.
The meteor was spotted shortly before 10pm and sent a sonic boom across southern England, according to scientists from the UK Fireball Alliance (UKFall), which is led by staff at the Natural History Museum.
UKFall said the bright light could be seen from Ireland to the Netherlands, and the meteor is set to break the world record as the most-reported ever – with 758 such reports on International Meteor Organisation’s website so far.
Across the UK, many video doorbell and security cameras captured the astronomical event.
“The video recordings tell us its speed was about 30,000 miles per hour, which is too fast for it to be human-made ‘space junk’, so it’s not an old rocket or satellite,” said UKFall’s Dr Ashley King.
“The videos also allowed us to reconstruct its original orbit around the sun. In this case, the orbit was like an asteroid’s.
“This particular piece of asteroid spent most of its orbit between Mars and Jupiter, though sometimes got closer to the Sun than Earth is.”
UKFall said though the meteor fragmented in the atmosphere it is likely “a few fragments” reached the ground.
“If you do find a meteorite on the ground, ideally photograph it in place, note the location using your phone GPS, don’t touch it with a magnet, and, if you can, avoid touching it with your hands,” said Dr Katherine Joy of the University of Manchester.
Comments: Our rules
We want our comments to be a lively and valuable part of our community - a place where readers can debate and engage with the most important local issues. The ability to comment on our stories is a privilege, not a right, however, and that privilege may be withdrawn if it is abused or misused.
Please report any comments that break our rules.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article