Fireball over Gloucestershire sparks hundreds of reports as public told not to touch meteorite fragments

Watch: Fireball that lit up UK skies likely to be piece of asteroid

A fireball over Gloucestershire sparked hundreds of reports of sightings, experts have said, prompting warnings for the public not to touch meteorite fragments.

Pieces of meteor are believed to have landed in Cheltenham or nearby after the yellow-green fireball was visible for around six seconds at 9.55pm on Sunday night.

There have now been more than 900 reports of sightings to the International Meteor Organisation (IMO), which have come from as far away as Belgium and the Netherlands.

The UK Fireball Alliance hopes that the fireball will eventually break the IMO record, which currently stands at 2,046 for a fireball event in November 2017.

Scientists are now appealing to members of the public in an attempt to find pieces of the meteorite, which would be the first recovered in the UK for three decades.

“It’d be really exciting to get hold of it,” said Dr Luke Daly, a planetary geoscientist at the University of Glasgow. “This is the first fireball we think has dropped such a substantial amount of mass, and it would help us build up a picture of how the solar system has evolved over billions of years.”

The most recent verified meteorite landing in the UK was the Glatton Meteorite in 1991, which was discovered by a pensioner tending to onions in his garden at the time of the impact.

Dr Katherine Joy of the University of Manchester advised: “If you do find a meteorite on the ground, ideally photograph it in place, note the location using your phone GPS, don't touch it with a magnet, and, if you can, avoid touching it with your hands.

"Pick it up in a clean bag or clean aluminium foil if possible!”

On average a space rock of a searchable size lands on British soil once a year.

“It’s really unfortunate that this has happened in a pandemic. At any other time, the whole team would be driving down to Cheltenham and searching for it," Dr Daly said.

People should not use magnets to try to identify the meteorite, Dr Daly said, as this would instantly erase the original magnetic signal which is preserved on meteorites and dates from billions of years ago.

Watch: Footage shows fireballs lighting up the sky as the UK is hit with a meteor shower