WATCH: Fireball over the Med: did you see it?

BEAUTIFUL! The fireball originated from a rock from a comet entering the earth’s atmosphere CREDIT: Meterorides.net Facebook @Meteorides

A SPECTACULAR fireball passed over the Mediterranean just off the coast of Almeria in the early hours of Sunday morning.

SMART project detectors at the Calar Alto observatory in the Filabres mountains and at observatories in the Sierra Nevada and Seville captured stunning images of the fireball as it made its way across the night sky at 3.44 am on October 13 at an altitude of some 95 kilometres.

Meteoroides.net explained on social media that the “beautiful and slow” fireball originated from a rock from a comet entering the earth’s atmosphere at a speed of around 58,000 kilometres per hour.

The fireball advanced north towards Murcia before disappearing at a point about 27 kilometres from the coast, approximately 79 kilometres above sea level, following a 104-kilometre trajectory in the atmosphere.

The SMART project detectors operate within the framework of the South-Western Europe Meteorite Network (SWEMN), which aims to continuously monitor the sky in order to register and study the impact against the earth’s atmosphere of rocks from different Solar System objects.

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Written by

Cathy Elelman

Cathy Elelman is the local writer for the Costa de Almeria edition of the Euro Weekly News.

Based in Mojacar for the last 21 years, Cathy is very much part of the local community and is always well and truly up on all the latest news and events going on in this region of Spain.

Her top goals are to do the best job she can informing the local English-speaking community, visitors to the area and the wider world about about the news in Almeria, to learn something new every day, and to embrace very new challenge this fast-changing world brings her way.

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