Doorbell cameras captured the moment a huge meteor lit up the night sky over small suburban towns Monday in England.
The British Met Office asked followers to send in any footage of the meteor as it flew over the island nation. Several Twitter users were lucky enough to catch the entire thing on camera, thanks to their doorbells.
The most striking video came from user Vijay Parekh, whose black-and-white Nest camera footage caught the meteor soaring through the sky for some eight seconds before it disappeared back into the ether. The footage was taken in Harrow, where clear night skies reportedly made the meteor far easier to see.
After seeing tweets about #meteor this evening, checked doorbell footage at about 8pm. Spotted it! Cam facing North from #Eastcote @metoffice @harrowonline @eastcotelocalco @BBC @NASA pic.twitter.com/qpKKyO363Q
— Vijay Parekh (@vjparekh) January 9, 2023
A Wolverhampton resident’s Ring doorbell camera captured another video of the meteor at around 8 p.m. local time. In the footage, a man can be seen exiting his vehicle and turning to look at what appeared to be the huge fireball as it whizzed by him overhead.
20:01 over Wolverhampton pic.twitter.com/Zxjf8LdURC
— Gully Sund (@Gully_Sund) January 9, 2023
A Nest cam also picked up footage of both the meteor and a plane flying nearby, one user said. The clip shows the stark difference between the two objects’ trajectories and speed. (RELATED: The Weird Things We Learned About UFOs In 2022)
“[The meteor] wasn’t like a shooting star I have seen in the past. It seemed overwhelmingly close,” one witness named Laura told local news outlets, according to the Harrow Times. “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.”