Amazing video shows huge fireball shooting through sky after meteor sighting in Sheffield
This is the moment a meteor blazed through the sky over South Yorkshire, in a stunning light display which captivated stargazers.
The incredible footage of the fireball was captured on a security camera at Alex Laycock and his girlfriend Gemma Hague’s home in Hoyland, Barnsley, on Sunday night, at around 9.55pm.
It was one of numerous meteor sightings across the UK that evening, with at least 120 reports stretching from parts of the north including Sheffield as far south as Essex.
Alex, a 30-year-old heating engineer, told how he and Gemma, 27, had been watching Walking Dead on TV when she asked him ‘what was that flash then?’.
“She’d seen it out of the corner of her eye. I had a look on the Nest doorbell and it had caught it on the camera. It was pretty cool,” he said.
“She thought it was a shooting star but I said it was a meteor because it looked similar to videos I’d seen before.
“It doesn’t look that bright on the video but she said it was really bright at the time and lit up the whole sky.
“I couldn’t see it at all from where I was.
“When we’re watching TV I sit in the middle of the room and she sits on the other sofa where she can see the TV and out of the window.
“It looked like a meteor video I had seen before when they come and disintegrate, flash then disappear.
“I think it flew across the whole country and I saw one other video of it on Facebook that was also on a Nest doorbell.”
Alex and Gemma, a hairdresser, have been together nine years and are expecting their first child next week.
Alex added: “Gemma joked ‘Is that our baby girl crashing down to earth?’ and I said that would be a bit dramatic of her.
“In the video you can see how it comes from the right of the window, comes towards you getting brighter, then there is an explosion.
“It gets a lot brighter before disintegrating and disappearing.”
Alex added that the camera was facing south, towards Sheffield.
Meteors, which are often referred to as shooting stars, are lumps of space rock which burn up as they enter Earth's atmosphere.
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