The fireball was seen tonight in the skies over Portugal and Galicia, Spain, a SMART project leader from the Institute of Astrophysics of Andalusia (IAA-CSIC) told Lusa.
SMART Principal Investigator José Maria Madiedo explained that the event happened at 22:08 Spain time (21:08 Lisbon time).
According to witnesses in Galicia, the fireball was visible for three seconds, it was bright green and fragmented, it was also moving forward.
On the Facebook page “Meteo Trás os Montes – Portugal” on Tuesday evening, reports were published of a fireball observed mainly in the north of Portugal, but also in other parts of the country.
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 leads to this phenomenon.
The rock that came from outer space, when it collided with the atmosphere, heated up at great speed, forming a fireball.
“Judging by the behavior of the stone, it most likely came from an asteroid, not a comet,” he told Luce.
According to the first information, not yet confirmed, the stone was supposed to fly over the north of Portugal or possibly over the Atlantic along the coast of Portugal and Galicia, he stressed.
The SMART project detectors operate as part of the Southwest European Meteorological Earth Observation Network (SWEMN), the purpose of which is to constantly monitor the sky in order to record and study the impact of rocks on the Earth’s atmosphere from various objects in the System. , Solar.