Meteor lit West Berkshire sky on Saturday night

A METEOR so bright that it set the night-sky alight was spotted in West Berkshire as it made its way from northern Scotland to Devon on Saturday night.
Sightings of the meteor, which burned for as long as 15 seconds before disappearing, was reported all over the country, and was also seen by amateur astronomer Adrian West from Great Shefford.
Mr West, who was in the garden looking at Mars at 9.40pm, said he caught the light of the fireball in the corner of his eye: “I had been looking in the wrong direction and when I lowered my binoculars, I only caught tail-end of it. The whole thing would have lasted 10 to 15 seconds and was bright enough to light up the ground.
“I went inside, and the whole twitter was ablaze with it, people across the country had seen it – all the way from Aberdeen to Cardiff.”
Mr West speculated that the large rock may have originated in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, where it could have been knocked out of its orbit by another big rock thousands of years ago, eventually to find its path into the earth’s atmosphere.
He also said that it was impossible to speculate on whether it had reached the earth’s surface: “It seemed to fizzle out as it passed by Orion, but that could happen because it had slowed down to terminal velocity. If it did hit the earth, it is unlikely to leave a crater, and it may have fallen in the sea.”