ladbible logo

To make sure you never miss out on your favourite NEW stories, we're happy to send you some reminders

Click 'OK' then 'Allow' to enable notifications

Brits Fear Apocalypse As 2021 Starts With Strange Orange Lights In The Sky

Brits Fear Apocalypse As 2021 Starts With Strange Orange Lights In The Sky

What a start to the new year

Amelia Ward

Amelia Ward

Just as we thought we'd safely waved goodbye to 2020 and tiptoed carefully into 2021, many Brits last night feared that we'd actually blindly walked into the apocalypse. People across the country spotted strange, orange lights floating across the sky just after midnight last night (31 December).

Of course, social media users were out in force with all sorts of theories and conjecture.

Some pointed the finger at extraterrestrials, while others thought - more rationally - they could be Elon Musk's Starlink, the International Space Station or meteors.

Stargazing Twitter account @VirtualAstro posted about the lights at 12.41am.

It wrote: "It appears quite a few of you saw a bright orange object flying over the UK a few minutes ago.

"I've seen a pic and I am baffled to what it could be. Isn't the ISS, but could be a meteor. And only a few minutes into 2021."

Brits were commenting on the tweet saying they'd also seen the orange lights drifting across the sky.

People from as far afield as Hull, Norfolk and Devon all reported them. One filmed them above Birmingham:

One user said: "I saw this little orange light in the sky just gone midnight.

"I thought maybe it was from the street lights but it just enters the video randomly! Then does some weird move and disappears."

One added: "I saw a bright orange light south of Streatham in London, def not a lantern it was moving too fast.

"Was odd enough for me to notice, wrong colour lights for a plane or helicopter."

While another person in Kent posted a photo of a glowing orange light, adding: "Really weird, quite slow and very bright, no flashing lights then literally slowed right down for a few then fizzled out!"

Twitter/@righton_carla

But, alas, there is probably a more boring explanation. It was most likely not the doing of beings from outer space - don't @ me, UFO crew - but down to celebratory sky lanterns or maybe Starlink.

Although the lanterns are often criticised for being dangerous to animals and wildlife, many still set them off on New Year's Eve and you can get packs of them on Amazon for less than a tenner.

Featured Image Credit: Twitter

Topics: UK News, Weird