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Around 6pm local time, February 3 2009, a large fireball was seen in the evening skies over Ireland. First video of the blazing meteor can be seen above.
Reports are coming in that the “desk-sized” meteor may have landed in a field. It may be a piece of a larger object that exploded in the atmosphere, scattering debris over the country.
“I saw the ball of fire just above the trees. I rang the emergency services. I thought it was a helicopter.”
– Local caller
Read more on Universe Today, or on the Irish Times website.
UPDATE: The video above is most likely false….at least it does not show the meteor over Ireland from February 3. I have searched the net for any images or video of the meteor and haven’t found anything yet, although Irish news sites are actively asking readers to submit their photos so hopefully some will surface soon. Regardless, there was a very bright meteor that lit up the evening skies and attracted a lot of attention yesterday, the RTE broadcast footage can be seen here.
UPDATE: Video has been removed by the user….to which I say “good”. 😉
Lights in the Dark 
Something doesn’t look quite right to me with that footage. It looks like an evening rocket launch heading into sunrise or some other kind of contrail rather than a fiery fireball. I could have sworn the video is running backwards, too, check out the puffs in the trail actually returning to the “meteor”, rather than dragging behind it in the beginning of the video.
Hmmm…
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I saw that too and wondered the same thing.
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That video is for sure fake. I saw the meteorite last night while traveling over the border between Tyrone and Donegal. It looked similar to that but had a more defined round shape (white) and had a trailing orange flame behind and it lasted only 2 -3 seconds before disappearing behind the horizon line of mountains beyond Glenveagh area. Also, the object was travelling from left to right so unless the video was taken further north than Malin head then it would be impossible to track it in the direction (right to left) as shown in the video.
All that aside, it was an amazing site yesterday evening. I thought I was seeing things and pulled into the side of the road. About 10 mins later Todayfm broadcast other sightings.
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Thanks for that info Stephen. It seems the YouTube video above is most likely a fake, or at least not of the event from yesterday evening. Not sure why anyone would do that, but then again people do stupid things all the time.
The RTE News televised report can be seen here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cu5Qn3ipPeQ
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There was something about a 20k reward for finding the Meteorite and that people were combing the midlands looking for it.
It would be some find.
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Sure would be. There’s a show here on TV called Meteorite Men about two guys that do just that as a career. They use huge homemade metal detector sleds dragged behind a truck to locate meteorites buried in the ground, and dig them up for fame and fortune (easily tens of thousands of $$ for a large one.) Wonder if they booked a trip to Ireland.
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