In the last minutes of this Saturday, a huge flash illuminated the sky over almost the entire country. There are reports of sightings of a green-blue ball of light from Porto to Lisbon, passing through several other regions of Portugal and Spain. Many will have then heard what they say was a pop/explosion. So far there is no scientific confirmation about the phenomenon in question, which, according to the descriptions, points to an extremely bright meteor (or meteorite), which exploded upon entering the atmosphere, what astronomers call a fireball or bolide.
But we will have to wait for the official information from the Andalusian Institute of Astrophysics (IAA-CSIC), which centralizes the information from the detectors of several stations of the SMART project in Spain (Huelva, Toledo, Granada or Seville, for example) and also in Portugal . SMART continuously monitors the atmosphere to observe and analyze the impact of possible Solar System objects against our Planet.
For now there are many images circulating on social networks.
The fall of meteors or meteorites is not a rare phenomenon. The well-known meteor showers are exactly that, remains of meteorites that enter the Earth’s atmosphere at high speed, due to the interaction of a comet with the Earth, in which rocks from that comet are detached from its orbit, or, by On the contrary, when it is the Earth crossing that orbit.
Source: Observadora
