By Alec Fernandes
A pair of intensely bright green meteor trails illuminated skies thousands of miles apart this week. On September 11, sky-tracking networks in Spain recorded a massive bolide, shown above, flying over the Mediterranean Sea between Catalonia and Mallorca at 3:46 a.m. local time. Less than 48 hours earlier, another fireball, shown in the video below, flashed across Southern Maryland and Virginia early September 9, triggering hundreds of calls to the American Meteor Society. The meteor over the United States rattled houses with a loud sonic boom, while the sighting over Europe was so bright it reportedly turned night into day.
Both events coincide with the September Epsilon Perseids, a minor annual meteor shower that doesn't normally see back-to-back fireballs of such magnitude. Data from the Southwestern Europe Meteor Network confirmed the Mediterranean object struck the atmosphere at roughly 148,000 mph. At such extreme velocities, friction vaporizes metallic nickel and magnesium within the space rock, ionizing atmospheric oxygen to produce a distinct emerald hue.
Did you catch either of these dazzling displays? Let us know on our Facebook page!