Meteor lights up the sky across England
Baku, March 5 (AZERTAC). Police forces across the UK were inundated with calls last night after a large fireball, thought to be a meteor, was spotted in the sky.
Reports of a `bright light` and an `orange glow` were received by police across Scotland and the north of England at about 9.40pm yesterday.
Some people are believed to have phoned the police fearing a plane had crashed.
The Met Office tweeted: `Hi all, for anyone seeing something in the night sky, we believe it was a meteorite.`
The Kielder Observatory also reported the sighting of a `huge fireball` travelling from north to south over Northumberland.
The Observatory posted on Twitter: `Of 30 years observing the sky, fireball best thing I have ever seen period.`
Meteors are particles from space that burn up in a streak of light as they enter the Earth`s atmosphere, whereas meteorites are larger objects that survive the trip and reach the surface of the Earth.
Dr David Whitehouse, an author and astronomer, said: `Judging by its brightness, it may have have been large enough to survive and hit the ground but until people work out its trajectory we won`t have any idea where it might have come down.`
Dr Whitehouse said the object was about the size of a fist and was probably the debris of a planet that never properly formed.
`It`s a chunk of rock that`s probably come from somewhere between Mars and Jupiter has been in space for thousands of millions of years.
`There are tens of thousands of bits of rock and grains of sand orbiting between Mars and Jupiter. Some of it comes out of that orbit and some of it hits the Earth.`
Amateur astronomer, Graeme Whipps, spotted the bright light while taking photos of the aurora in Chapel of Garioch near Aberdeen.
Graeme, 48, who works as a meteorologist, captured the image with a Canon 40D, 15 second exposure.
He said: `It looked like it was moving south or southwest, whilst brightening.`
He is one of a number of people across Britain who saw a meteor across the north of England and Scotland.
Mike Ridley, an amateur photographer, of Durham City, managed to capture a stunning image of the meteorite against the backdrop of the `Global Rainbow` - a laser display by artist Yvette Mattern installed in Whitley Bay to celebrate the London 2012 Cultural Olympiad in the north-east of England.
Mr Ridley, 49, a Quality Assurance Inspector for Nissan in Washington Tyne and Wear, said: `I was standing with my friend when we saw a bright light in the sky moving really fast. `I was there to photograph the laser show in Whitley Bay, but the light caught my eye so I turned the camera around.
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