Within hours, two brilliant fireballs have been the talk of the town in Spain: one crossed the strip between Soria and Zaragoza during the night and another lit up the Andalusian dawn. Both were especially bright meteors which disintegrated in the atmosphere with no evidence of any debris falling to the ground.
The scientific networks involved, SPMN and the IAA-CSIC Smart project, have collected images and data that help to understand the phenomenon and distinguish it from possible reentries of space junk, frequent and sometimes easily confused due to their spectacular nature.
A sporadic fireball strikes between Soria and Zaragoza
A las 21:39 (peninsular time), a very bright meteor identified as #SPMN060925K It passed through the atmosphere at high speed before completely disintegrating.
The astrophotographer Antonio Lasala recorded the moment from Morata de Jalón (Zaragoza), capturing the final flash in great detail as the object disintegrated high in the atmosphere.
The Fireball and Meteorite Research Network (SPMN) confirmed that it was a sporadic fireball, that is, a meteor independent of any known meteor shower, visible from different points in the province of Soria and nearby areas.
The phenomenon, which coincided with a day of intense sky observation for other reasons, highlighted the unpredictability of these events: appear without warning and sometimes they surprise with a particularly powerful flash at the end of their trajectory.
Andalusia wakes up with a fireball traveling at 79.000 km/h.
Hours later, the detectors of the Smart project (IAA-CSIC) They registered at 5:32 A fireball lit up the sky over the northern province of Malaga and was captured from several Andalusian observatories.
The analysis, led by José María Madiedo, concludes that the rock that originated the meteor entered at about 79.000 km/h and came from a asteroid. Upon hitting the air, the surface heated up to thousands of degrees and became incandescent.
The trajectory began at an altitude of about 81 kilometers over Los Corrales (Seville), it moved northeast, flying over the north of Malaga, and was extinguished at about 34 kilometers over Priego de Córdoba, after traveling approximately 94 kilometers within the atmosphere.
The recordings show how, along the luminous path, the rock it broke into several pieces before shutting down, a typical behavior when the material undergoes sudden increases in pressure and temperature.
Smart is part of the Southwest Europe Network (SWEMN), coordinated by the IAA-CSIC, whose objective is continuously monitor the sky to study the entry of rocks from different bodies in the Solar System and characterize their trajectories and origins.
Not all that glitters is a meteorite: the role of space debris
Intense flashes are not always natural. A few weeks ago, a long luminous trace visible over Andalusia was attributed with high probability to space junk by the Southeast Meteorological Association, a reentry that many mistook for a meteor.
Why these records matter
Detections such as those of SPMN and the network SWEMN They allow the construction of catalogues of trajectories, speeds and probable composition, key data for understanding the entry of extraterrestrial material and its impact on the atmosphere.
The contributions of security cameras, telephones and automatic stations are valuable: with that citizen collaboration Science gains coverage and precision, and the ability to quickly identify is improved meteors, fireballs and artificial reentries.
The combination of independent observations, expert analysis and distributed detection networks has allowed us to clarify these two recent cases in Spain and provide context on similar phenomena that, although they are specific, continue to arouse great interest between the scientific community and the public.
