IRISH STARGAZERS were treated to an incredible sight on Friday night as a massive fireball lit up the skies across the country.
Reports from areas up and down the country told of a 'fireball' shooting across the sky between 7.30pm and 9pm on Friday, October 4th.
Primarily spotted in Limerick, Kildare, and Galway, it was also seen elsewhere in Ireland as well as Wales and Scotland in the UK, and some quick thinkers were able to grab videos of the space object flying overhead with a fiery orange tail trailing behind it.
The below video captured the 'massive' fireball as it travelled over the Claddagh area of Galway city.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9OP7CtU80z0
Early reports suggested that the fireball was a meteor flying close to the Earth, but The Limerick Astronomy Club revealed that the impressive sight was the result of a Chinese navigation satellite which was launched into orbit in 2016 along with some debris.
The fireball is actually some of that debris re-entering the atmosphere.
In 2011, another massive fireball which was seen across Ireland launched a hunt for fragments of a meteor, which was suspected to have landed somewhere in the North-West of the country-- but nothing was ever found.
In 1999 however, fragments of another fallen meteor were found in a countryside lane in County Carlow and sold for a price 50 times greater than gold.
