There have been hundreds of reported sightings of a “fireball” crossing skies off Ireland and Britain on Wednesday night.
Many people have posted images of the sightings on social media.
David Moore, chairman and founder of Astronomy Ireland, said “what people saw was a brilliant ball of light, a fireball, crossing the sky for about 10 to 20 seconds”.
Mr Moore said there had been sightings as far east as London and as far west as Killarney and Mayo.
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“We know it’s something burning up from space and we think it was probably a piece of a man-made satellite,” he said.
“It could have been natural — there are lots of rocks from space that hit the Earth — but this one lasted so long, it must have been coming as a parallel to the ground, which is exactly what a piece of debris would do.”
The UK Meteor Network said there have been nearly 800 reported sightings, including many from Northern Ireland and Scotland, of what it believes was space debris.
“The preliminary trajectory has been calculated by the IMO [International Meteor Organisation] and indicates that the object, which we now believe to be space debris, would have landed in the Atlantic south of the Hebrides,” the UK Meteor Network said.
