Fireball observed in the sky over southern Portugal at 100,000 km / h
A fireball traveled at 100,000 kilometers per hour, at dawn on Sunday, across the sky in the south of Portugal and Spain, announced on Tuesday those responsible for the SMART project, at the Andalusian Astrophysics Institute (IAA-CSIC) .
The project sensors signaled a passage of the fireball through the different astronomical observatories, reports the agency EFE.
As analyzed by the principal investigator of the SMART project, José María Madiedo, the event took place at dawn on Sunday, at 00:07 local time.
The entry of a meteorite into the Earth’s atmosphere, at a speed of about 100,000 kilometers per hour, resulted in a phenomenon.
The rock coming from space, when colliding with the atmosphere at an enormous speed, became incandescent, thus generating a ball of fire, which started about 105 kilometers above the province of Badajoz (Andalusia), specifically over the town of Villanueva del Fresno.
From this point onwards, it advanced towards the northwest, entering the air space of Portugal and, finally, it died out at about 60 kilometers of altitude in the Alentejo region, in the locality of Santo António do Baldio, municipality of Reguengos de Monsaraz, district of Évora.
In total, the glowing meteorite traveled through the atmosphere for 51 kilometers.
The SMART project’s detectors operate within the scope of the Southwest Europe Earth Observation and Meteorological Network (SWEMN), which aims to continuously monitor the sky, in order to record and study the impact on the Earth’s atmosphere of rocks from different objects in the System Solar.