Meteor trackers say bright fireball spotted lighting up the night sky above Scotland likely to be space debris

Hundreds of Scots have reported seeing a ‘fireball’ on Wednesday night.

Video footage posted to social media from various locations across the country shows a bright light streaking across the sky, with sightings first reported around 9pm.

The UK Meteor Network said it was likely that the object, which was mainly seen over Scotland and Northern Ireland, was space debris rather than a meteor.

They said: “There have been nearly 800 reports of the fireball that was seen over UK last night.

“The preliminary trajectory has been calculated by the International Meteor Organization and indicates that the object, which we now believe to be space debris, would have landed in the Atlantic south of the Hebrides.”

😱 This is the moment a meteor was caught on camera hurtling over Tarbert, Loch Fyne at 10pm on Wednesday evening.

Did you see it, too?

The video was captured by 24-year-old Caitlin MacKinnon who is studying film in London at LCDS. She was in the area on holiday. pic.twitter.com/oa3g7XWZRy

— The Press & Journal (@pressjournal) September 15, 2022

have i just seen a meteor fly over Johnstone?? pic.twitter.com/lPK14hTzxl

— dn (@dannynellx) September 14, 2022

More than 800 reports were made to the International Meteor Organisation following the event.

Steve Owens, astronomer and science communicator at the Glasgow Science Centre, was one of those to witness the spectacle.

He told BBC Radio Scotland’s Good Morning Scotland programme: “It was incredible. I was sitting in my living room at exactly 10 o’clock last night and saw out of the window, due south, this brilliant fireball, this meteor streaking across the sky, and I could tell that it was something special because I could see through broken cloud.

“It wasn’t perfectly visible; I could see that it was fragmenting, breaking apart, there were little bits coming off it.

“And normally, if you see a meteor or a shooting star, they are just tiny little streaks of light, they last for a fraction of a second, This one was streaking across the sky for at least 10 seconds – probably longer than that – and it travelled from due south all the way across to the west, so it was a pretty incredible sight.”

Lots of sightings of the meteor tonight. Reports coming in from across Ireland and Scotland. https://t.co/bD5hkBJje2

— Barra Best (@barrabest) September 14, 2022

Did I legit just see a shooting star in Motherwell or is that something crashing out the sky? pic.twitter.com/DBQh8zXjnT

— Rhiannon Hayes (@RhiannonHayes12) September 14, 2022

He said it is possible it could have landed but added it is “highly unlikely” it landed in Scotland.

He said: “Normally these tiny little streaks of light, these little shooting stars, they all burn up and everything just vanishes and evaporates in the atmosphere, but the thing last night was bigger than a little bit of dust.

“The one last night might have been the size of a golf ball or maybe a cricket ball, maybe bigger than that, so it’s certainly not impossible that bits could have landed.

“It looked like it was travelling a fair distance, as these things do, and it was fairly flat across the sky as I saw it.

“The UK Meteor Network, which has had hundreds of reports from around Scotland and further afield, is going to be able to triangulate all of those reports to work out its trajectory.

“It looked to me like it was heading… it was certainly heading towards the west and, given that people in Northern Ireland were reporting seeing it, it could well have passed over land and ended up in the Atlantic, but it’s certainly not impossible that it landed – finding it will be the challenge.”