A mystery fireball shooting across the sky has been captured on camera, lighting up the Irish countryside as if it was daylight.

The clip, uploaded to YouTube by the UK Meteor Observation Network, shows the massive dash of light fly across the sky at Portadown, County Armagh.

At around 10:10pm on Sunday night the huge 'fireball' was seen right across the country, lighting up all of the island like daylight for about 5 seconds.

The blast of light was so visible that the Irish Coast Guard contacted Astronomy Ireland as they were receiving so many reports of possible distress flares.

Fireballs are caused when a large rock from space burns up in the atmosphere as it collides with Earth at speeds of the order of 100,000mph, reports the Irish Mirror.

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Fire: The mystery object shoots across the sky

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David Moore from Astronomy Ireland said: "This event was so bright that a piece or pieces may have survived the re-entry and landed as extremely rare and valuable meteorites.

"We are appealing to everyone who saw the fireball to fill in to online report form on Astronomy Ireland's website 'astronomy.ie' as soon as possible while the details are fresh in their minds.

"In return we will send everyone our analysis of all the reports and where we think any meteorite may have landed."

Astronomy Ireland are appealing to any companies who operate CCTV cameras to check their recordings for Sunday night around 10:10pm to see if they recorded the fireball near the horizon as photographic records like this are extremely valuable.

Quelle:Mirror