A bright light could be seen soaring through the sky over the west coast on Wednesday night.
Locals in Oban, Tarbert, Dunbeg and Appin were stunned to see the fireball streak past the area.
More than 800 people, primarily in Scotland and Northern Ireland reported the sight to the UK Meteor Network late into the night on Wednesday.
The network said it began receiving reports at about 9pm.
After a day of confusion with many thinking it was space debris, the fireball has been confirmed as a meteor after more data has been collected.
OK. The final analysis is in! The fireball over NI and Scotland last night was definitely a meteor. The fireball observed yesterday (Sept 14, 20:59:40 UT) above the UK lasted over 20 seconds and traveled NW, passing directly over Belfast. 1/4 pic.twitter.com/GnV70S13B8
— UK Meteor Network (@UKMeteorNetwork) September 15, 2022
According to new calculations from the UK Meteor Network, the meteor travelled around 180miles before crashing into the Atlantic near the Isle of Islay.
Susan Simpson, from north Argyll, was on a walk with her daughter Blake last night when she saw something in the sky.
She said: “It was so scary. Where we live in Dunbeg there’s a new bit of cycle path at the back of the new part of the village, not far from where the community woodland is going to be.
“That’s where we were but there are no lights, it was pitch black.
‘A huge ball of light’
“We quite often go out at night because we like looking for shooting stars and satellites and that kind of thing, we’ve always been interested in that.
“We were on the really dark part of the path and had already seen a few satellites, then the next minute this thing appeared. It was a huge ball of light with a streak of light, like a tail almost, behind it.
She said: “Honest to goodness, it was terrifying, and it completely freaked my daughter out. She doesn’t scare easily but it completely freaked her out.
“Once it was gone and we were back in the village among the light I did say to her ‘I have to say I was completely freaked out as well’.
“We had no idea what it was so we were freaked out, part of you is thinking ‘is it a plane coming down? Is it something otherworldly?’.
“I don’t know, but it was really scary.”
She added: “It was huge, we see shooting stars quite a lot out here because there’s not a lot of light pollution, but I’ve never in my life seen something like that.”
Steve Owens, astronomer and science communicator at the Glasgow Science Centre, saw the fireball from his living room in the city.
Where did it land?
He told BBC Radio Scotland’s Good Morning Scotland programme: “It was incredible. I was sitting in my living room at exactly 10 o’clock last night and saw out of the window, due south, this brilliant fireball, this meteor streaking across the sky, and I could tell that it was something special because I could see through broken cloud.
“It wasn’t perfectly visible; I could see that it was fragmenting, breaking apart, there were little bits coming off it.
“And normally, if you see a meteor or a shooting star, they are just tiny little streaks of light, they last for a fraction of a second.
“This one was streaking across the sky for at least 10 seconds – probably longer than that – and it travelled from due south all the way across to the west, so it was a pretty incredible sight.”
The UK Meteor Network said calculations on the trajectory of the object indicate it would likely have landed in the Atlantic, south of the Hebrides.
Mr Owens agreed it was “highly unlikely” it landed in Scotland.
He said: “Normally these tiny little streaks of light, these little shooting stars, they all burn up and everything just vanishes and evaporates in the atmosphere, but the thing last night was bigger than a little bit of dust.
“The one last night might have been the size of a golf ball or maybe a cricket ball, maybe bigger than that, so it’s certainly not impossible that bits could have landed.
“It looked like it was travelling a fair distance, as these things do, and it was fairly flat across the sky as I saw it.
He said it look as though it was “heading towards the west”.
He continued: “Given that people in Northern Ireland were reporting seeing it, it could well have passed over land and ended up in the Atlantic, but it’s certainly not impossible that it landed – finding it will be the challenge.”
Unbelievable sight
People took to social media to see if others had seen the unbelievable sight.
James Hamilton said: “Thought I saw something, just figured it was a reflection from a light.”
Bill Macfarlane said: “I saw this walking home at 10pm! Was awesome to see!”
Catherine Lewis-Macmillan, in Taynuilt, added: “It was really bright. Absolutely amazing.”
Did you see a bright light in the sky last night? Send us your photos with time and location to livenews@ajl.co.uk
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