‘Once in a lifetime’ fireball captured on webcams

A POTENTIAL “once in a lifetime” event was picked up by Shetland Webcams on Sunday morning.

A meteor fireball is thought to have passed the isles at around 7.39am on 29 December, which was captured briefly by several webcams around Shetland.

Shetland Webcams said there appeared to be two smaller flashers before a bigger one.

“As usual at this time of the year the skies are also plagued with cloud and many of the cameras were somewhat damp with passing showers but the visual impact was certainly captured,” it said.

“Strangely there was no sound captured from any of the locations that are streaming live sound but the flash was seen across the islands.”

It said the fireball appeared to pass Shetland near the south-east, with one of its Sumburgh cliff cameras pointing directly at it.

“Two of our cameras and two of our radio links that were pointing in the direction of the flash did some strange things immediately afterwards,” Shetland Webcams said.

“Fjara and Town Hall east did capture the object amidst the cloud prior to it burning up as these cameras have faster shutter speeds and are not operating in low light mode.”

You can watch the video of the fireball here.