This stunning image of a shooting star is what award-winning photographs are made of – but the man behind the lens said capturing the sight was an "absolute fluke".

John Alasdair Macdonald, a tour guide in the Scottish Highlands, caught the meteor on film at about 9pm last night.

Based in Drumnadrochit, on the west shore of Loch Ness, Mr Macdonald had taken his Sony RX100 compact camera outside to capture some photographs of the stars on what he described as a "beautiful night".

But as he clicked away, the meteor soared right into his sights.

"As my wife said, it was just sheer dumb luck," Mr Macdonald told The Independent: "It was a complete fluke, an absolute fluke".

Mr Macdonald posted the image on the Facebook page of his tour website, The Hebridean Explorer, where it quickly attracted a lot of attention.

Asked whether the experience had inspired him to pursue his photography skills on a more professional level, Mr Macdonald said: "I think that’s as good as I’m going to get!"

Meteors are small particles of space debris that burn up as they enter the Earth’s atmosphere, making them appear like falling stars.

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The one photographed by Mr Macdonald was part of a meteor shower seen over north-west Scotland last night.

Stornoway Coastguard said it had received a number of "flare reports" that were later found to be related to the phenomenon.

A spokeswoman for the Maritime and Coastguard Agency told the Herald Scotland: "We had six calls after 9pm and 9.20pm to Stornoway reporting it as flare activity