Sheffield meteor: Video appears to show meteor blazing across sky over city last night

The amazing footage was captured by the SheffieldWeatherCam Twitter account, based in Wincobank, which shares hourly weather reports for the city. It was recorded last night, Monday, January 9, shortly after 8pm.

The meteor sighting was one of many across the country yesterday evening, with people from Sussex to West Yorkshire saying they had seen a bright object streaking across the sky. The Met Office tweeted at 8.15pm yesterday asking people to share their footage of the meteor, and more than 250 people responding, with many posting video clips.

Laura, who did not wish to give her surname, said she had spotted the object from Rickmansworth in Hertfordshire. She told the PA news agency: “I had just turned my computer off and looked up out of the window, it was perfect timing. It wasn’t like a shooting star I have seen in the past. It seemed overwhelmingly close.

“It was large in the sky, orange with an orange blaze behind it, not what I would describe as a long shooting star tail but a shorter orange one. Then it just disappeared… Popped out of the sky. It seemed like it hadn’t really happened. I tried to tell my husband but they didn’t quite believe my account!”

What is a meteor and why were there so many sightings yesterday?

The Met Office said the time of day and clear skies had contributed to the quality of the sightings. According to NASA, meteoroids are ‘space rocks’ which when they enter Earth’s atmosphere at high speed and burn up are called meteors, with the fireballs also being known as ‘shooting stars’.

When the rock survives its trip through the atmosphere and hits the ground, it’s called a meteorite.