'Fireball' spotted shooting across sky over Cornwall
There have been hundreds of reports of the meteor across the country
A flaming 'fireball' has reportedly been spotted in the sky over Cornwall.
The UK Meteor Network says there were over 800 sightings of the meteor across the country on Sunday night.
According to an interactive map, three of those were in the Duchy, over Carbis Bay, Perranporth and Looe.
A number of sightings were also recorded in Devon, including in Broadwoodwidger, Plymouth and Chagford.
You can find more information here.
Videos from across the UK show the ball of flames shooting through the sky just before 10pm.
"Thousands of people across the UK saw a slow-moving meteor fireball on 28 FEB 2021 at 9:45 PM. 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.
"We would like to remind the public that we are still in a national lockdown and ask them not to travel specifically to this area. If anyone local to the area finds any piece of fragments, please do get in touch with either UKMON or National History Museum."
UK Meteor Network
“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. 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.”
Dr Ashley King of the Natural History Museum and UKFAll
What is a meteor?
"Meteoroids are objects in space that range in size from dust grains to small asteroids. Think of them as “space rocks."
"When meteoroids enter Earth’s atmosphere (or that of another planet, like Mars) at high speed and burn up, the fireballs or “shooting stars” are called meteors.
"When a meteoroid survives a trip through the atmosphere and hits the ground, it’s called a meteorite."
NASA