Experts' verdict on 'fireball' captured over Nottinghamshire skies

The suspected meteor fireball is circled here in red in a still from a dashcam video

A video of what was claimed to be a meteor shooting across the sky in Nottingham last night has been explained by experts. Footage captured on the dashcam of a car travelling on the A453 into Nottingham shows a slight white light flash and flicker above the countryside at around 5.47pm yesterday (Monday, February 19).

The UK Meteor Network received 86 reports of a fireball across the east of England and the west of the Netherlands, Belgium and France at the same time. The video submitted to Nottinghamshire Live shows the object appear in view on the right hand side of the screen and hurtle downwards for a period of less than four seconds before vanishing.

Now, two experts from the University of Nottingham have offered their insight on the evidence. Astronomy professor Meghan Gray explained that the footage “does appear to be of a meteor”.

She said: “I see a nice bright streak followed by a flash near the end. This is very likely to be a small rocky object being heated by its rapid passage through the upper atmosphere. Most of the objects producing meteors are fragments of comets, asteroids, or space dust that the earth intersects as we travel around the sun.

“Such events happen continuously, and most ‘shooting stars’ that we can all see if we go out on a dark clear night and look long enough are the result of something about the size of a grain of sand. This object was probably a little bigger than that, thus producing such a nice bright trail. The flash at the end may be due to the object breaking apart. It’s very unlikely there was any danger to anyone on the ground.”

Dr. Julian Onions is an astrophysicist and programmer at the university and said that fireballs of the like are “somewhat uncommon”. He agreed with Prof. Gray, explaining that fireballs only occur when a big enough piece of rock enters the atmosphere.

He said: “As these lumps of rock are larger they make a brighter image and last for longer. Most meteorites are grain of sand type objects, but these fireballs are probably more pebble or bigger size. They are also sought after, as there is a good chance they will not burn up completely and so make it to the ground, and people can go and find them.

“Not very likely in this case unless it landed on a ship! With so many reports it may be possible to work out where the piece of rock came from, possibly tracking it back to the remains of a comet or an asteroid belt object.”