Meteor witnessed across Britain, triggers panic

London: Police across Britain were inundated with calls after a large fireball, thought to be a meteor, was spotted in the sky, media reports said on Sunday. Reports of a 'bright light' and an 'orange glow' were received by police across Scotland and the north of England on Saturday night.

Some people phoned the police fearing a plane had crashed, the BBC reported.

Reacting to the calls, 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 Daily Mail reported.

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."

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."

Posted in: World