Shine brightly
In Portugal, a comet shot through the sky and lit up the entire sky turquoise – and one lucky girl captured the entire spectacle on camera.
Portuguese content creator Milena Refacho’s stunning fireball video was posted on X (formerly Twitter) and Instagram and has spread incredibly quickly across the internet. Her original post has been viewed over six million times and internet users have joined her in admiring the spectacle.
In the video, 19-year-old Refacho’s friends can be heard calling out to heaven – and, in one hilarious case, to hell – in Portuguese during the surprise light show.
The European Space Agency later confirmed that a comet fragment had indeed passed through the skies over Portugal and Spain and apparently burned up in the atmosphere, causing the fantastic blue-green explosion that lit up the sky around midnight local time. It was unlikely that any of the fragments survived the fiery impact, the ESA added.
Comet puzzle
While it is certainly not unusual for such space projectiles to leave bright tails as they burn up in our planet’s atmosphere, the descent of this comet fragment was particularly bright, New York Times explained because it was speeding along at around 160,000 kilometers per hour. That’s twice the average speed of a rocky asteroid, which apparently also made it twice as bright.
As NYT adds in his report that the ice- and rock-like nature of most comets suggests that they formed early in our solar system, making this comet’s incredible final display all the more special.
In an interview with the newspaper, planetary astronomer Meg Schwamb of Queen’s University Belfast said that while “there are notable meteor showers throughout the year that result from Earth passing by debris clouds from certain comets,” the brightness of this comet could tell scientists something about its size.
This chunk, says Schwamb, “is probably a bit larger than most of the meteors we see in meteor showers, so the light spectacle was even bigger.”
“It’s an unexpected interplanetary fireworks display,” the astronomer added.
More about large space rocks: Huge piece of space junk crashes on the farm of a Canadian who wants to sell it and spend the money on a hockey rink
