A large meteor has been seen streaking across the night sky on Monday evening, with residents in both Westminster and Wolverhampton reporting sightings.
Experts believe the meteor burnt up in the atmosphere before it could make landfall in Britain. While initial video and images indicated it was going to land in the UK, data suggests it disintegrated high above the ground, and they have put out a call for people to send them as much footage of the meteor as possible so they can analyse the event.
One woman who saw the meteor said she "had just turned my computer off and looked up out of the window" before spotting the celestial object, adding: "It was perfect timing."
Photographs captured by automatic cameras as part of the UK Meteor Network, a community of amateur citizen scientists, is currently gathering all the imagery and footage of last night’s meteor event to supplement its own dedicated 186 meteor-spotting cameras. It caught images of the bright meteor above at around 8.01pm on Monday night.
The network has 186 cameras positioned around the UK which detect meteors in the sky, feeding information to the Global Meteor Network. Last year they recorded 1,615,558 meteors.
The Met Office tweeted: "Reports of a meteor in the sky over the UK just now. If you managed to take any footage we'd love to see it".
Laura, who did not wish to give her surname, from Rickmansworth in Hertfordshire, caught the flying object on camera at around 8pm from her front room.
Her video showed a light streaking through the sky above a residential area for just under 10 seconds before disappearing from view.
"I had just turned my computer off and looked up out of the window, it was perfect timing," she said.
"It wasn't like a shooting star I have seen in the past. It seemed overwhelmingly close."
Aeroplane for scale pic.twitter.com/aUffFw0xgj
— Daz Bradbury (@dazbradbury) January 9, 2023
"It was large in the sky, orange with an orange blaze behind it, not what I would describe as a long shooting star tail but a shorter orange one.
"Then it just disappeared... Popped out of the sky. It seemed like it hadn't really happened. I tried to tell my husband but they didn't quite believe my account!"
Tom Tugendhat MP also reported a sighting “over Westminster”.
A Met Office spokesman said the time of day and clear skies contributed to the quality of the sightings.
Most meteors burn up in the atmosphere before reaching Earth or disintegrate upon contact with land and while there was initial optimism this meteor could be found intact, analysis has extinguished this hope.
Recovered meteors, if located quickly, can shed light on mysteries of the universe and also help answer questions on the origin of the Solar System, as well as the formation of Earth as we know it.
Leading meteor expert Dr Luke Daly, a lecturer in planetary geoscience at the University of Glasgow, told The Telegraph: “We've been crunching the numbers all morning. Unfortunately it seems to have all burnt up in the atmosphere at a height of about 39 km — so no meteorites on the ground sadly.”
Dr Daly was instrumental in finding, preserving and studying the Winchcombe meteorite which landed on a family’s driveway during lockdown in early 2021.
Dr Richard Greenwood, a senior research fellow at the Open University who also helped find Winchcombe, told The Telegraph: “Unfortunately initial information suggests it burnt up high in the atmosphere. That is fairly common.”
It is likely that the meteor was too small or soft to make it through the atmosphere without breaking up completely. Had it been larger or harder, some rock may have survived the trip and landed safely in Britain.
“It certainly looked as though it had potential to deposit meteorites on the surface,” Dr Greenwood said.
“The landing site would likely be on land rather than over the Sea,” he added, with the UK the most likely final destination.
“All the material could well have been destroyed prior to it reaching the Earth’s surface,” Dr Greenwood said.
“It depends on how big it was to start with, how fast it was going and the angle of flight. The composition is a factor. Some meteorites are very soft and just fall apart on the way down."
The UK Meteor Network was instrumental in finding Winchcombe and scientists are now trying to replicate that success with today‘s hunt and call for as many videos as possible.
The majority of the Winchcombe meteorite landed on the driveway of the Wilcock family, but a team of academics and volunteers, including from Glasgow University and the Natural History Museum, also found fragments in a nearby field.
The meteorite was traced within a matter of hours and was in near-perfect condition when discovered, giving scientists a specimen which has not had time to be altered and contaminated by Earth’s soil or atmosphere.
As a result it has led to vast amounts of research and is now a mainstay of museum exhibits and science festivals.
It was found to be a rare type of meteorite and Britain's first ever carbonaceous chondrite meteorite, and the best example of this kind of ancient rock ever found.
A study published in Science Advances in November 2022 found the rock likely contained water at one point, a breakthrough discovery which bolstered the theory that asteroids may have brought water to Earth billions of years ago.
“The Winchcombe meteorite is the most accurately recorded carbonaceous chondrite fall,” the authors write in the study.
“The composition of the Winchcombe meteorite is largely unmodified by the terrestrial environment.
“It contains abundant hydrated silicates formed during fluid-rock reactions, and carbon- and nitrogen-bearing organic matter including soluble protein amino acids.
“The near-pristine hydrogen isotopic composition of the Winchcombe meteorite is comparable to the terrestrial hydrosphere, providing further evidence that volatile-rich carbonaceous asteroids played an important role in the origin of Earth’s water.”
