A fireball was sighted tonight in the sky of Portugal and Galicia, Spain, the person in charge of the SMART project, from the Institute of Astrophysics of Andalusia (IAA-CSIC), informed the Lusa agency. The principal investigator of the project. ELEGANTJosé María Madiedo explained that the event took place at 22:08 in Spain (21:08 in Lisbon).
According to witnesses in Galicia, the fireball was seen for three seconds, intense green in color and fragmented, it was also advancing.
The page on social networks ‘Meteo Behind the Mountains — Portugal’ published this Tuesday night reports of the fireball sighted mainly in northern Portugal, but in other parts of the country.
We already have photos! ☄️
Meteorite “hunted” in Braga!
“Here it is… seen by the meteorite detector of the Braga Astronomical Observatory in a northerly direction at 9:07 p.m.!
It was beautiful ????”
©️João Vieira pic.twitter.com/WqJ68mSdxq— Meteo Tras-os-Montes – Portugal (@MeteoTrasMontPT) March 14, 2023
José María Madiedo said that the trajectory and velocity had not yet been calculated and that he was waiting for data from other observatories.
The entry of a meteorite into the Earth’s atmosphere gives rise to this phenomenon. space rock, colliding with the atmosphere at high speedit became incandescent, thus generating a ball of fire.
Due to the behavior of the rock, it is most likely that it came from an asteroid and not from a comet”, he also told Lusa.
According to the first information, still unconfirmed, the rock would have flown over the north of Portugal or perhaps the Atlantic off the coast of Portugal and Galicia, he stressed.
The detectors of the SMART project operate within the scope of the South-West Europe Meteorological and Earth Observation Network (SWEMN), which aims to continuously monitor the sky, with the aim of recording and studying the impact on the Earth’s atmosphere. of the rocks of different objects of the System. .Solar.
Source: Observadora
