Meteor fireball lights up skies across Scotland

Look, up in the sky! Is it a, er, plane crashing? A bomb? An eerie orange ball of light?

No, it was a meteorite. For a few brief moments today, a bright fireball lit up the midnight skies above Scotland.

The meteor was spotted streaking above Glasgow, Argyll and Bute and as far northwest as the Outer Hebrides at about 12.50am today.

Meteors are rocks from the asteroid belt that sometimes travel millions of miles through deep space and enter the Earth’s atmosphere with a bang.

Their high velocity means that these rocks, even ones no smaller than a walnut, generate a fireball and can cause a sonic boom when they break.

Caitlin Holland, a 22-year-old studying childcare at the University of Glasgow, was among those who saw the cosmic rubble.

‘I was lying in my bed and I heard it a few seconds before I seen it and then my room lit up,’ she told Metro.

‘My first thought was to take a video because I thought no one would have believed me, I was gobsmacked when I seen it, probably the only one I’ll ever get to see.’

One expert told Metro that it’s difficult to say how big the meteor was or if it survived to reach the ground (Picture: X/@adriancoll1)

Others on social media said the boom of the meteor was akin to an ‘earthquake’, a ‘lightning bolt’ or a ‘rocket’.

Alfredo Carpineti, an astrophysicist and science writer for IFLScience, told Metro it would be tricky to estimate how large today’s meteor was

‘But if it was caught by camera on the UK Fireball Alliance,’ he added, referring to the network of cameras that capture the objects as they enter the atmosphere, ‘there might be a chance to find some fragments.’

Meteor pieces may have landed on Ben Nevis, says expert

Ben Nevis from the summit of Garbh Beinn (Picture: Getty Images)

Speaking to the Metro, the alliance’s secretary, Charlotte Bays, said that the meteor was likely small and travelling ‘relatively slowly at about 20,000 km/h (~12,427 mph)’ when it first pierced the atmosphere.

The rock fell around 12 miles above the ground, she added, and possibly came from the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter.

‘This particular fireball was quite spectacular and was as bright as a full moon before going into dark flight – this is where the fiery tail is extinguished, but the rocks keep travelling along the path,’ said Bays.

‘The trajectory of the fireball was observed over the area between lochs Treig and Etricht (Scottish Highlands), with the “strewn field”, or “probable meteorite drop zone”, covering this wider area, with meteorites being possible around Ben Nevis; we are still collating all the data to refine this further.’

As beautiful as these celestial fireworks displays are, what you usually see are the leftovers of a comet – a filthy snowball that leaves behind a trail of rocks and ice.

These small rocks glow as they pierce the sky because of how fast they’re travelling (Picture: X/@adriancoll1)

‘We do not think it is associated with the Eta Aquarids [meteor shower], as these are debris deriving from Halley’s Comet, which has a predictable long-period orbit and generally occur as a “shower” due to the smaller size of the material, with no recorded meteorites recorded from these events,’ Bays added.

What do I do if I find a meteorite?

The dazzling sighting comes only days ahead of the Delta Aquarid meteor shower, also known as the Southern Delta Aquariids, which peaks around mid-July.

If one survives a buffeting by our atmosphere and crashes into the ground, it’s a meteorite. These tend to be about the size of a human fist, a far cry from the sometimes football field-size rock they once were.

For anyone who spots a space rock casually zipping above them or thinks they’ve found a fragment of one, Bays asks them to report it to the UK Fireball Alliance.

Take a photo of the rock – a meteorite is usually smooth and dark black or brown – with something like a ruler to show the scale.

Use Google Maps to document the exact location, the alliance says, and place it in a clean, dry sandwich bag or tin foil. Don’t use your bare hands.