A giant green fireball soared through the skies above Spain and Portugal over the weekend. In Portugal it was spotted on Saturday at 11.45pm local time, and in Spain it was seen on Sunday at 12.
45am local time. The fireball could be seen lighting up the sky for several seconds, before giving off a large flash and tapering off — eliciting reactions of astonishment from witnesses to the sky show in footage posted on X . WATCH THE VIDEO ABOVE: Stunning fireball soars over Spain and Portugal.
The glowing meteor was confirmed to be a “small piece of a comet” by European Space Agency (ESA) Operations on Sunday night. A piece of comet becomes a meteor when it begins to burn up in the Earth’s atmosphere, according to NASA . It is the burning up of minerals — such as the ice and dust of which comets are made — that produces the bright, glowing colours.
One witness who was driving at the time said he didn’t look out of his door window until the sky lit up, and that’s when they saw the meteor: “I was in awe of how bright and big (it was) and how long it lasted until it turned red and quickly disappeared.” “Such a crazy thing to see the whole sky go bright greenish in the middle of the night, making it look like it was daylight,” they said. ESA Operations captured the stunning display on its fireball camera, located in Cáceres, in Spain’s west.
“We estimate that it flew over Spain and Portugal travelling at 45 km/s (161,000km/h) before burning up over the At.