After a "silent fireball" sighting, two huge fireballs were spotted across the skies in Southern England that made "multiple booms lasting 2-3 seconds." Several skywatchers witnessed the meteor shower resulting in blazing fireballs on Sunday.
The first meteor shower was spotted across England, Wales and northern France early Sunday and the following morning. The first fireball was categorised as a bolide, an extremely large meteor as bright as the full moon.
The second fireball was spotted over south and southwest England and South Wales almost seven hours after the first sighting. A few sky watchers who witnessed the meteor said it produced a "sound, with one describing it as a rumble or multiple booms lasting 2-3 seconds," Sky News reported.
Richard Fleet, a member of the UK Meteor Observation Network (UKMON), told Sky News that the first fireball was the second brightest meteor spotted in around three years in the UK.
"It was probably a few kilograms of material," Fleet said, adding, "It would have been coming in at about 20 kilometres per second (km/s). The Space Station is moving at about 8km/s. There are multiple flashes as it breaks up. It would have happened at about an altitude of about 30km.
"It was bright but nothing like the one that broke up over Chelyabinsk (in Russia). That one would have been about 15 metres across. This one about 15cm."
Witnesses said the meteor was extremely bright and it looked like firework.
"I was inside so my field of view was somewhat restricted. It was significantly brighter/bigger than anything I'd seen before (eg "shooting star"), esp as in full daylight," AMS website quoted a witness as saying.
On November 21, a "silent" fireball lit up the sky in Japan. The meteor burned and illuminated the sky with green light before vanishing.
