Dashcam captures green 'St. Patrick's Day' meteor over Britain
LONDON -- There were several reports from across Britain of a green flash lighting up the sky Thursday, leading some to dub the fireball the "St. Patrick's Day Meteor."
DJ Paul Gilbert captured the moment, which happened shortly after 3 a.m. local time on a dashcam as he was driving through Battersea in London.
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The UK Meteor Observation Network also posted a video captured at Church Crookham station in northeast Hampshire, showing the huge flash of light. The network said it was one of the biggest sightings recorded.
It was a slightly larger meteor than is typical, Dr. Karen Masters from Portsmouth's Institute of Cosmology and Gravitation told BBC Radio 4's Today.
“It would have been a meteor, a chunk of rock or metallic rock coming in from the solar system and hitting the earth’s atmosphere," she said, adding that thousands hit Earth every day.
And the green flash that everyone saw? Masters said that was likely due to the composition of the comet.
Earlier this month, people took to Twitter and Facebook in Scotland after seeing a big white flash in the sky.
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Blathnaid Healy is the UK Editor at Mashable. She joined the company in October 2014 and is based in the London office. Before Mashable, Blathnaid was Content Manager and COO of WorldIrish, a startup focused on the Irish diaspora. She spent almost five years working at Ireland’s largest media company RTE as a multimedia journalist where she also set up the broadcaster’s first dedicated social media team and project managed output for several high-profile events across web, mobile and social media. Blathnaid has reported from the US, Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, Romania and, of course, Ireland. And in case you’re wondering, it’s pronounced Blan-id.
