Verified by three separate eye-witness accounts, the meteor – which could have been hundreds of miles above the Earth's surface – may have been no larger than a pea.

The meteor was initially reported to The Evening Telegraph by a reader in Werrington, Peterborough, who spotted the glowing green object at 7pm on Wednesday.

That prompted systems engineer Adam Warr to reveal he had seen sighted something similar as he walked his dogs in Orton Longueville, Peterborough.

He said: "I'm glad someone else saw it, because I thought I was imagining things.

"I saw this object passing over to the north, as if heading towards Ferry Meadows.

"As your Werrington reader indicates, this was a greenish-tinged glowing object that seemed quite large in the night sky.

"I'd say it was football-sized and very bright, with a green halo surrounding it.

"I'm no expert on such things, but would suggest that the meteor had a high copper content, causing the green glow as it burned up.

"Any fan of HG Wells or '70s prog rock would find startling parallels between this and the martian cylinders in the War of the Worlds.

"I was half expecting to see giant metal tripods emerging from Ferry Meadows."

Meanwhile, a third sighting was made in Stamford by Dave Dickens, at precisely the same time.

He said: "I was in my car in Recreation Ground Road when I spotted something travelling seriously fast through the sky.

"It had a 5ft tail and was the size of a football. It was gone in a split second."

Andrew Richens, a member of the Society for Popular Astronomy, said: "The object seen was a meteor. they only become meteorites if they fall to Earth.

"Had the object indeed fallen to Earth, it may well have been football-sized.

"However, the object would have been several hundred miles up in the outer atmosphere when seen, and judging its size with the naked eye may have been somewhat extreme.

"Meteors do occasionally contain small quantities of copper. They do, however, also contain nickel which was the most probable cause for the green flame.

"Most meteors are the size of a pea and burn up as they meet with friction generated from hitting the Earth's atmosphere, at about 17km per second."