A blue meteor lit up the sky over Europe last night as a chunk of comet burned up in the atmosphere.
Videos and images on social media show the bright blue flash of a fireball streaking across the sky in the south of Spain and Portugal, towards the Atlantic Ocean.
People as far north as Brittany in France and as far south as Andalusia in Spain reported seeing the shooting star. Early analysis suggests it came from an icy comet, hence its startling light-blue colour.
“It appears that this object was a small piece of a comet,” the European Space Agency (ESA) wrote on X, formerly Twitter.
“We estimate that it flew over Spain and Portugal travelling at ~45 km/s [25 miles per second] before burning up over the Atlantic Ocean at an altitude of ~60 km [37 miles]. The likelihood of any meteorites being found is very low.”
Scientists did not have any indication the fragment of rock was heading towards Earth until it was seen lighting up the planet’s atmosphere over Spain at around 10:45pm local time.
Prof Jose Maria Madiedo, an astronomer at the Institute of Astrophysics of Andalusia, led the work from the ground to determine from several fireball-spotting cameras that the space rock had ended its journey over the ocean – and to ratify the assessment of the ESA’s Planetary Defence Office that it was of cometary origin.
Which comet the piece came from, and how big it was, is uncertain – but it is possible it originated in Halley’s Comet and formed part of the Eta Aquariids meteor shower.
However, this is yet to be confirmed and the fireball was travelling slower than an Aquariid event normally does. NASA says the Aquariids run from mid-April to the end of May and peak in early May.
The blue hue of the meteor in the sky is likely to have been caused by the interaction of the icy cometary material with charged particles from the Sun, as well as the Earth’s atmosphere.
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