The fireball was visible over northern England, Northern Ireland and Scotland as it burned up in the clear night sky shortly after 10pm on Wednesday night. It traveled 300km over Wales, the Irish Sea and Belfast before crashing into the Atlantic near Islay, according to new calculations by Britain’s Meteor Network. The network’s initial calculation suggested it was space junk that could have come from Elon Musk’s Starlink satellite program. But he retracted that theory after collecting more data. John Maclean, an astronomer at the network, said: “We’ve looked at it from many more angles. He is definitely a meteor. Probably a small piece of asteroid broken off by an asteroid. It came in the orbit of an asteroid.” He added: “We think it probably ended up between 50 and 100km from Islay. Now it will be at the bottom of the ocean.” He said the fireball was initially mistaken for space junk because it was traveling more slowly than a typical meteor, and videos of the sighting suggested it disintegrated higher and earlier than a meteor. He said: “The speed and the way we break it down is what threw us off in the first place. It was quite slow, which is more consistent with a space junk, so I considered it too slow for a meteorite. “The velocity was 31,950 mph, which is more consistent with space junk. Hence our initial thoughts.” On Thursday morning Maclean’s had speculated that the fireball was a Starlink satellite that had been used and was burning up in the atmosphere as planned. Archie Bland and Nimo Omer take you to the top stories and what they mean, free every weekday morning Privacy Notice: Newsletters may contain information about charities, online advertising and content sponsored by external parties. For more information, see our Privacy Policy. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and Google’s Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply. But he later said: “We went away and looked at any possibilities of space junk. There was no one who could give us space debris. It certainly wasn’t SpaceX. There were two Starlink satellites due to be launched, but they would not have landed near the UK. They came down over North America.” The network received about 800 views of the fireball. Maclean said: “Most people who saw it probably had a rare experience. The speed of that and the way it dissipated was a bit strange.” In a statement, the network said: “The fireball over Northern Ireland and Scotland last night was definitely a meteor. The fireball seen over the UK yesterday lasted for over 20 seconds and traveled north-west, passing directly over Belfast.’
