Stunning image of fireball meteor streaking through night sky

A photographer captured the stunning images of bright green fireball meteor spotted over Bude in Cornwall last month when the night sky suddenly lit up as bright as daylight.

The incredible images were filmed around 11 pm when the fireball meteor flashed light which was brighter than the planet Venus.

Photographer Chris Small was at the seaside resort of Bude, and caught a stunning photo of the green meteor as it streaked through the sky, Mirror UK reported.

He said: “I see a lot of meteors due to spending so long shooting the night sky, but I’ve never seen anything quite like that before! It was incredible, and lit up the entire coast almost as bright as daytime for a few seconds. There were beautiful green and blue colours.”

Fireball meteors are caused by small asteroids striking the atmosphere, entirely or almost entirely burning up due to friction, sometimes suddenly exploding.

From Mr Small’s picture, experts from the European Space Agency predict that the original object could have ranged from tens of centimetres to a metre in size.

The fact that the meteor glows green in the image reveals the presence of oxygen in Earth’s atmosphere.

As the air surrounding the burning ball heats up, atoms become ‘excited’, with oxygen emitting light at a frequency of about 558nm – in the blue-green part of the visible spectrum.

This is also the reason why the Northern Lights often have a green colour, caused by charged parcels from the sun striking and exciting atoms from the upper atmosphere.

This particular fireball was spotted by at least five people across the UK, who reported it to the International Meteor Organization – an organisation set up to collect meteor observations from around the world.