A giant meteor made up of debris from Halley’s Comet streaked across the sky over southern England – to the delight of millions of stargazers.
The fireball glowed red, blue and green as it burned up on entering the Earth’s atmosphere on Wednesday night.
Sightings of the celestial body were reported in Cornwall, Hampshire, Lancashire, south Wales and Worcestershire.
Many people used Twitter to express their delight and wonderment at seeing the heavenly body.
Samuel Burton, of Bath, asked: “Did anyone else just see that crazy meteorite? Was in the sky for a solid couple of seconds! Wow!”
Doric Stone tweeted: “I saw it! It was really bright and really, really fast. Glad I’m not the only one.”
Steven Daniels wrote: “I just saw a large white light low down heading west over Frome.”
Experts say the phenomenon was likely to have been debris from Halley’s Comet, which returns to our skies every 75 years.
The comet, which last appeared in 1986, is scheduled to stop by Earth in 2061.
Full report on Meteor spotted in night sky in England and Wales 8 May 2013 http://goo.gl/J2DGu
Hello im from Christchurch Dorset i was out walking my dog last night around 9.45pm and my dog stopped i turned round and there it was blue and purple fire ball coming just above the roof tops really low floated across the night sky i ran around the corner and it was gone i thought i was going mad and i herd it on the news this morning lovely sight