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You are currently viewing Social media flooded with videos of dramatic fireball over Spain and Portugal – IGN

Social media flooded with videos of dramatic fireball over Spain and Portugal – IGN

The European Space Agency’s (ESA) Planetary Defense Office is investigating the appearance of a huge fireball that lit up the sky over Spain and Portugal late last week. The fiery body was observed moving across the night sky traveling at approximately 45 kilometers per second at 22:46 UTC on May 18 before disappearing from view in a bright flash 60 km above the Atlantic Ocean.

The fireball was originally thought to have marked the destruction of a small meteor that had come into contact with Earth’s atmosphere. However, the ESA later announced that the intruder was in fact likely a fragment of a larger icy comet that broke away from the main body and wandered around the Solar System for an undetermined period of time before ending up on a fateful course of clash with our Blue Marble.

Footage of its explosive destruction was posted on social media by observers in Spain and Portugal, along with footage from ESA’s fireball camera in Cáceres, Spain.

During entry into the atmosphere, the intense speed of the comet fragment would compress the atmospheric gases in its path, a process that would in turn slow the object down and simultaneously heat it up. His descent would continue until the uneven pressure at the front and back of the fragment overcame its tensile strength, causing the ancient traveler to disintegrate into a cataclysmic fireball.

ESA’s Planetary Defense Office is currently analyzing data on the fragment to determine its size and trajectory, in an attempt to understand whether any part of the space rover could have survived to fall into the Atlantic Ocean. Researchers are also working to determine whether the object — which was not actively tracked before impacting Earth’s atmosphere — can be found in telescope data leading up to the event.

Sunday’s unexpected event is the latest in a series of spectacular cosmic events that graced Earth’s skies in 2024, beginning on April 8 with a dramatic total eclipse that swept across parts of North America, bathing the Earth in a lunar shadow. This display of orbital mechanics was followed earlier this month by a bout of intense solar activity that triggered a series of spectacular auroras on Earth that lit up the night sky across the northern United States.

Astronomers have also predicted that the distant white dwarf star T Coronae Borealis will explode in a powerful new explosion later this year, making it visible from Earth for the first time since 1946. For more science news, why not catch up on the discovery of an ancient waterway connecting 31 ancient Egyptian pyramids, or read how a piece of the International Space Station crashed through the roof of a Florida family’s home earlier this year.

Image credit: ESA/PDO/AMS82 – AllSky7 Fireball Network
Anthony is a freelance contributor covering science and video game news for IGN. He has over eight years of experience covering groundbreaking developments in multiple scientific fields and has absolutely no time for your antics. Follow him on Twitter @BeardConGamer

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