Londoners fear 'alien invasion' after strange light darting across the night sky spotted this week

 Londoners fear 'alien invasion' after strange light darting across the night sky spotted this week

Londoners were quick to assume the light was a UFO, overlooking more logical explanations

Two Londoners were caught off-guard on Wednesday (November 23) when they were looking up to the night sky and saw something unusual.

The Londoners described seeing a ‘bright light shoot across the London sky’, which they said was ‘going about as fast as a shooting star’.

Posting about their encounter to Reddit, one of the two friends said the object ‘went the whole way across the sky’ and was ‘visible for about 7-8 seconds’. Confused as to what they had seen, the Londoner asked if anyone had an explanation.

Of course Londoners were quick to jump to the worst possible conclusions. The first assumption on everyone’s mind was that it was a UFO.

“Nice try MEN IN BLACK. You’re not neuralyzing me,” said one. Another joked: “Sorry that was me returning from Krypton a little too fast to be in time to watch the match tonight.”

It appears several Londoners saw the same thing that night. One person recalled: “I saw it from the M11 whilst heading towards London. It went from east to west, thought it was a meteorite.”

Someone else reported seeing something similar on Saturday (November 11). They said: “One of us saw it initially then about 10 minutes later we both witnessed it again. It was over Central London, visible for about 8 seconds at 7:49pm.”

There have been several reports online of fireballs over London’s skies this past week. One person on Twitter managed to take pictures of what they said was a meteor over London on Tuesday night (November 22), while another reported seeing one in Thurrock, Essex at around 9:45pm the following night.

However, one Redditor had another explanation for what people had witnessed. They suggested it may have been the International Space Station (ISS), which was forecast to be 'incredibly bright' over London’s night sky on Tuesday.

The ISS is expected to be visible over the UK for the next two weeks, and may resemble a star moving across the sky for a period of two to four minutes on each occasion.

Travelling at around 17,000 miles an hour above Earth's surface, the ISS circles the planet every 90 minutes.