A meteorite burning through the night sky was captured on a doorbell camera on the outskirts of Cardiff. The Ring doorbell camera picked up the fireball at around 8pm on January 9 in Taffs Well. The footage, shared by Colin Hyde, shows a white light getting increasingly brighter as is shoots across the night sky.
A meteor is a streak of light in the sky caused by a rock crashing through Earth’s atmosphere according to National Geographic. Colin reckons this one was "most likely" the end of the Quadrantid meteor shower which saw some 3,000 meteors recorded by 138 cameras in the first week of January according to the UK Meteor Network (UKMON).
The meteor could well have been the same rock as the one seen streaking across the Midlands, Sussex, Hemel Hempstead, and Hertfordshire – complete with a "whoosh" sound – on the same night. A Nest CCTV camera in Bristol also captured the moment the meteor curved through the air while a woman in Chippenham said: "I couldn't believe it. I was standing outside waiting for a lift to work when the sky lit up. A bright orange ball flew through the sky – it was incredible."
The Met Office confirmed that a meteor had been seen just after 8pm following a clear night for many parts of the country. Meanwhile UKMON tweeted on January 10: "A fireball at 8pm last night was reported by 500+ members of the public and was recorded by 13 cameras."
It estimated that the meteor entered the atmosphere at 89km with a speed of just 10.21km/s on an orbit close to Jupiter. One stargazer said: "It was an absolutely amazing experience – never saw anything like that before."
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