Seville Spain.
A fireball coming from a comet that crossed part of the sky central and southern Spain, at a speed of about 230,000 kilometers per hour, until it disintegrated near the Gulf of Cádiz, between this province and Huelva, in the vertical of the city of Jerez de la Frontera.
In its official social networks, SMART project, from the Institute of Astrophysics of Andalusia (IAA-CSIC), reported that around 5:08 (local Spanish peninsular time) one could see a ball as bright as the full moon crossing the southern sky and the center of the country.
This fact was analyzed by the researcher responsible for the SMART project, the astrophysicist José María Madiedo from the Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía.
Atmosphere
This analysis made the determination possible that the rock that originated this phenomenon entered the Earth’s atmosphere at a speed of about 230,000 kilometers per hour and came from a comet.
The sudden friction with the atmosphere at that speed made the rock incandescent, thus generating a fireball which began at an altitude of about 113 kilometers above Sierra de Cádiz and moved rapidly in a northwesterly direction.
The fireball was extinguished at an altitude of about 58 kilometers almost above the vertical in Jerez de la Frontera (Cádiz).
He the phenomenon was so bright which could be seen from more than 500 kilometers away.
fireball It was recorded by SMART project detectors at the astronomical observatories in La Sagra (Granada), La Hita (Toledo) and Seville.
These detectors operate within the Southwest European Fireball and Meteor Network (SWEMN), which aims at continuous monitoring of the sky to record and study the impact on the Earth’s atmosphere of rocks from various objects in the Solar System.