Meteor captured on doorbell cameras in England

People across England were treated to a dazzling display on Sunday night, as a meteor lit up the sky with a bright streak of light.

It was spotted shortly before 22:00 GMT, with some initially thinking it was simply a large firework.

But some lucky homeowners were delighted to discover they had captured the mesmerising event on their doorbell video cameras.

Scientists say the fireball was likely to have been a small piece of asteroid.

It was visible for around seven seconds.

Ivor Lafford, 52, has a Nest doorbell, which doubles as a security camera, fitted to the front door of his home in Milton Keynes.

He told the BBC he was sitting in his living room watching television on Sunday when he saw what he believed to be a "big firework".

"I just thought... what's that, and then I asked my wife to check the camera footage to see if it had picked it up," he said.

They were able to look back over the most recent camera footage and found the moment the meteor flew above their street, with the video showing a giant ball of light descending over their neighbour's property.

He said that other people with doorbell cameras might have unwittingly captured the same images.

"I could have looked away and wouldn't have known to check the footage," he added.

Mr Lafford said he found events like this "fascinating", although he added that he's not usually one for stargazing.

"My little boy is eight and was very excited about it," he said. "He's quite poorly at the moment going through chemotherapy, so it was quite nice for him to be excited about something."

Mr Lafford was not the only one who discovered they had recorded the event.

A woman known as Nikki on Twitter shared a clip from her doorstep in Appley Bridge, near Wigan in Greater Manchester.

In the footage the light can be seen soaring across the clear night sky.

There was also a vivid clip of the fireball captured by Katie Parr, which was shared on Twitter by the UK Meteor Network.

She later said it was taken on her Nest doorbell camera at 21:54 on Sunday over Monkspath, Solihull.

Meanwhile, Lee Moran tweeted a short clip showing the meteor, seen between two hanging plants on the front porch.

The meteor was likely to have been a small piece of an asteroid entering the Earth's atmosphere, according to scientists from the UK Fireball Alliance (UKFAll), which is led by staff at the Natural History Museum.

The organisation said it sent a sonic boom across southern England and its bright light could be seen from Ireland to the Netherlands.

They added that the meteor was set to break the world record as the most-reported ever - with 758 reports on the International Meteor Organisation's website so far.

Jim Rowe, of UKFall, said doorbell cameras have "an increasingly huge role to play" in the study of such events, "alongside specialised meteor and fireball cameras".

"That's because they are always pointed in the same direction and pretty-much always have the same field of view, so we can work out exactly where the meteor was," he said.

"That's a huge advantage over dash-cams in cars, which used to be the main source of videos."

He added: "The professional cameras are extremely well calibrated and can measure the location of a meteor trail to within 10 metres or so. But Nest cameras increasingly are everywhere, so we're trading accuracy for frequency of captures."

UKFAll has more than 30 cameras in the UK continually monitoring the sky for meteors and fireballs, and the event was picked up on six of them - at Cardiff, Manchester, Honiton, Lincoln, Cambridge and Welwyn Garden City.

The organisation said that although the meteor fragmented in the atmosphere it was likely that "a few fragments" reached the ground.

"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," said Dr Katherine Joy of the University of Manchester.