Mystery lights 'not meteor shower'
The mystery lights spotted in the night skies above Derry could not have been a meteor shower, a further eyewitness has claimed.
Last week, the 'Journal' reported that the unidentified lights - spotted over Derry in the early hours of March 7 - were part of a suspected meteor shower.
Local man Niall Smith said he had been left mesmerised by the six objects which he said "were bright orange almost red, like balls of flames burning with a tail behind them."
Armagh Planetarium confirmed the presence of at least one meteor - a fragment of cosmic debris entering the earth's atmosphere at extremely high speed - over the North West on the evening the lights were seen. But a new eyewitness account has now challenged that explanation.
Derry man Phil McGerigal says he, too, saw the lights at around 12.45am last Sunday morning. He says as many as ten objects lit up the night sky.
"There were ten of the lights moving very slowly, two groups of four and two single ones.
" I saw no tails and believe they were moving too slowly to be meteors.
"They were not meteors, they were moving way, way too slowly," he said.
While the search for an explanation to the latest sighting continues, one of the UK's leading UFO websites offers a more practical explanation for such orange light phenomena.
A spokesman for uk-ufo.co.uk says they have become inundated in recent times with sighting similar to the one over Derry last week.
"Each month we receive a large number of eyewitness accounts of sightings of single and multiple red and orange light formations in the sky," said the spokesman.
"In many cases, it is evident that the most likely explanation would be Chinese Lanterns released in the local area."
Did you see anything in the skies on March 6? If you did, why not add to the debate and leave us your comments below
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Weather for Derry
Sunday 27 May 2012
Today
Sunny
Temperature: 14 C to 24 C
Wind Speed: 13 mph
Wind direction: East
Tomorrow
Sunny spells
Temperature: 12 C to 23 C
Wind Speed: 13 mph
Wind direction: South east
