Freak fireball lights up Irish skies

A massive fireball was seen right across Ireland last night which may be “one of the best ever seen” in Europe and was a “huge event”, according to Astronomy Ireland.

The trail of fragments passed across the sky at about 10.55pm with sightings reported from Dublin, to Donegal, Cork, Sligo, Carlow, Longford, Antrim and across the UK and as far as the Netherlands.

It was "very unusual to see it in multiple countries," David Moore of Astronomy Ireland said

"I've never seen one fragmented like that and streaked across sky," he said. The fireball exploded into fragments, passed below the plough and all the way to the horizon.

Mr Moore said the cause of the fireball was not yet clear. "It's a piece of space debris, but whether it's manmade or natural is not known,"he said.

He said it was too slow for natural debris and was going the wrong direction for manmade debris. "It's probably a space rock that has skidded across the atmosphere".

Meteorites will have been dropped "but whether they landed in Ireland or at sea we will have to figure out" he said.

Witnesses described a trail of seven to 12 fireballs in a straight line across the sky. No sound was to be heard either by witnesses in the city or the countryside.

Kielder Observatory in the UK last night reported a sigting of a "huge fireball" .

"Many many fragments maybe in excess of 100 pieces started green went Yellow, no sound but long obvious termination lasted 20-30 seconds," Kielder observatory wrote in its Twitter account last night.

Mr Moore appealed for witnesses to submit a fireball report to the Astronomy Ireland website

"This will help us to triangulate the path," he said.

Twitter and Facebook filled with reports of the strange sightings last night, with metoer trending on Twitter in Ireland.

"Spotted what looked like about 8 fireballs traveling east to west over the M1 at Santry, Dublin at 10.56pm. Amazing," wrote one tweeter last night.

The Irish coast guard had reports from the north coast right down the east coast.