Spectacular Fireball Streaks Across Moroccan Sky at 87,000 MPH

The passage of a fireball over the Mediterranean Sea and northern Morocco was flashed at 140,000 kilometers per hour by the detectors of the SMART project of the Andalusian Institute of Astrophysics (IAA-CSIC), the astronomical observatories of Calar Alto (Almería), Seville and La Hita (Toledo) and the Sierra Nevada (Granada).

The fireball was recorded at 1:51 a.m. on Sunday morning, and was seen from everywhere in the south and center of the country, says the principal researcher of the SMART project, José María Madiedo of the Andalusian Institute of Astrophysics (IAA-CSIC).

The fireball was generated by the entry into the Earth’s atmosphere of a rock from a comet at a speed of about 140,000 kilometers per hour, making the rock incandescent. This fireball began at an altitude of about 111 kilometers above the Mediterranean, about 70 from the Andalusian coast. It traveled about 72 kilometers in the atmosphere.