A mysterious object is believed to have fallen from the skies over the North East this morning.

An object, leaving a smoke trail, was spotted around 7.30 am this morning (Wednesday, December 4) over Newton Aycliffe and Darlington.

Holly Hardy, 26, first spotted the object over Newton Aycliffe whilst she was catching the bus to work.

Holly said: "I saw the grey smoke and the thing falling from the sky. Immediately I was thinking 'oh God, there must have been a plane crash'.

"But when I zoomed in on my phone camera, it didn't look like a plane, as it didn't have the right shape.

"It looked really high up, and quite far away. My first thought was that it was a meteorite, or part of a plane that had fallen off.

"Me and my colleagues have been joking about it being an alien invasion all morning".

The Northern Echo reached out to the UK Fireball Alliance, and the Royal Astronomical Society, for any information on astronomical events that occurred overhead, but this brought up nothing.

The Royal Astronomical Society noted that there are a few minor meteor showers at the moment, though fireballs, usually the result of larger objects burning up in the atmosphere, are "essentially impossible to predict."

The object had not appeared in the UK Fireball Alliance's network of cameras. After checking their records, a spokesperson for the scientific organisation said: "At this time, we do not believe what your contact saw was a fireball."

Another eyewitness, Danny Alessandro, had seen a similar object in the sky whilst driving through Middleton St George on his way to work and believes it is linked to asteroid activity in Russia.

Seeing the object around 7.40 am, Danny captured images and video of an object falling to earth, leaving a pink light trail and plumes of black smoke in its wake.

He said: "I managed to catch this beautiful shot of the asteroid NASA was referring to. Although it was expected to crumble in earth's atmosphere, I'd say it made its way through."