People in Portugal and Spain had a shock at the weekend when a bright green fireball lit up the sky above them, Mail Online reports.
The brightly coloured comet fragment appeared late Saturday night, the European Space Agency (ESA) said. One Lisbon resident said the dazzling sight “was like a film”.
On Sunday morning, ESA published a video on website X showing a “stunning fireball” over the sky of the western Spanish town of Caceres, near the border with Portugal.
The ESA later said it was a “small comet fragment” and not a meteor. Experts estimate it flew over Spain and Portugal at 28 miles (45 kilometres) per second before burning up over the Atlantic. The ESA also added:
“The likelihood of any meteorites being found is very low.”
Videos circulated on social media in both countries, filmed in several cities and towns, showing the object crossing the night sky at high speed and illuminating it in bright blue and green colours.
Spain’s Calar Alto astronomical observatory also said that preliminary analyses by the Institute of Astrophysics of Andalusia showed that the object was of “cometary origin”.
Fireball at a concert in Barcelos
During a concert in the Portuguese city of Barcelos, video cameras captured an object that streaked across the sky during the singer’s performance. Another video shows the sky of Porto, Portugal’s second largest city, turning bright for a few seconds.
Many people contacted emergency services to report the incident. A spokesman for Spain’s 112 emergency services in Madrid told Europa Press news agency that he had received several calls.
Lisbon resident Bernardo Taborda, 31, said he was walking around the city with friends when the sky suddenly turned bright green. He also added:
“It almost looked like daylight … we all looked back and saw it. We all looked at each other and we were stunned, it felt like a movie.”
