WATCH: Great ball of fire lights up Spanish skies

A HUGE ball of fire lit up the skies of southern Spain and social media sites at 10.25pm on Sunday, December 11, as those lucky enough to be looking up at the sky at the time reported what they had witnessed.

The fireball, according to physics and astrophysics specialist Jose Maria Madiedo from the University of Huelva, head of the SMART project and Meteoroides.net website, was created by the impact at an of a meteoroid with the atmosphere at an estimated 72,000 kilometres per hour.

Although it crossed the skies over Granada and Jaen, the phenomenon was far brighter than the moon and visible across much of central and southern parts of the country.