Fireball lights the Irish sky extremely rare meteorite falls the Earth

Fireball lights up the Irish sky as 'extremely rare' meteorite falls to the Earth at 100,000mph.Sightings of a fireball blazing across the sky were reported across Ireland last night. People from across the country witnessed the spectacle, which happened at around 6pm.

It is thought the fireball was a space rock travelling at a 100,000 miles per hour, or the equivalent of a small atomic bomb blast in the skies.

Spotted: The fireball heads for Earth over Ireland...

David Moore of Astronomy Ireland said: 'This is a huge event.'

Mr Moore said those who saw it were facing inland at the time which indicated it landed on ground and not at sea.

One man in County Kildare who witnessed the fireball said he thought it was an aeroplane coming out of the sky.

Valentia Coastguard said it received several calls ranging from County Kerry, to the midlands and Northern Ireland over the sightings.

Joss Scott was driving along the Glenshane Pass when she spotted the fireball.

'It was a very bright green, with an orange trail coming from it,' she said.

... the meteorite becomes more visible the closer it gets to the planet

'It was travelling at fantastic speed, very high up in the sky, and it was heading north.

'It then went behind these black clouds over the Sperrins, towards Dungiven, then there was this large orange flash, so I'm not sure if it landed somewhere around there.

'It was quite a spectacle,' she said.

Terry Moseley, from the Irish Astronomical Association, said such an occurrence was 'extremely rare' and said there was a chance that some of it may have survived and fallen to earth as a meteorite.

'What it probably was is a small asteroid, which is a piece of space rock which has collided with the earth and burned up at very high atmosphere,' he explained.

'It seems to have travelled over most of Ireland, roughly from south to north and there is a possibility that a meteorite fell at the end of that, possibly somewhere in County Armagh.'

It lights up like a 'small atomic explosion' before disappearing

The last time a meteorite hit Ireland was in 1999 and the rock was retrieved in County Carlow.

It sold for 500 dollars per gram, and Astronomy Ireland is urging anyone with sightings to record it on their website, astronomyireland.ie.

Meteorites are fragments of rock that fall to Earth from space.

Having broken away from a larger body, they can measure anything from a fraction of a millimetre to the size of a football pitch and bigger.

As they enter the earth's atmosphere they glow due to the friction and flash across the sky before crashing to the ground. ( dailymail.co.uk )

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