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Lately we have been having a lot of meteor activity over the Iberian Peninsula, a phenomenon that causes great expectation.
As you will remember,
on March 29 we had two bolides over the eastern part of Spain, which generated many comments.
Tonight, around 0:46 CET (23:46 Lisbon time),
a bright fireball has illuminated the skies of Spain and Portugal. According to the Civil Protection of Portugal,
the meteor would have fallen in the village of Pereira, in Castro Daire, northern Portugal, 60 km southwest of Porto. Portugal declared an alert and mobilized its firefighters in case there was any information.
Here we can see an impressive video recorded by
@rvbzzx in
Lisbon and slowed down by
@jpunto88_ to make it look better:
Comment: Other videos:
The following selfie-video from Avéro in Portugal was captured by Mila Vladimirovna, @milarefacho
Some of the above and other videos can be found here:
International Meteor Society
Huge fireball over Spain and Portugal on May 18!
The fireball has entered the CNEOS list:
Peak Brightness Date/Time (UT) 2024-05-18 22:46:50
Latitude(deg. 41.0N
Longitude(deg.) 8.8W
Altitude(km) 74.3
Velocity(km/s 40.4
Velocity Components(km/s) vx -26.5, vy -24.1, vz 18.7
Total Radiated Energy(J) 3.7e10
Calculated Total Impact Energy(kt)
0.13
This year six others have entered the list, curiously, of very similar size. There now is one at 0.15,
four at 0.13, one at 0.11 and on at 0.098. The variation last year was between 0.076 and 7.2. kt! The
Chelyabinsk meteor has been estimated to between 400 and 500 kt of TNT.
The American Meteor Society has in the 2024 list recorded it as Event 2481-2024:
If the reports most distant from the trajectory are reliable, it was viewable at a distance of up to 1200 km. To verify if this is even possible, one can use a Distance to Horizon Calculator, like this German
online calculator that also is configurable to show feet and miles.
Since the altitude of the visible meteor has been given the range of 122 km, initially, and 54 km at the end, we can insert these figures and find out how far out that is visible. For an observer at sea level, the calculator gives values between 1252 km and 831 km.
To be able to view the meteor from Paris would be a "tall order" given that the atmosphere is not clear, but if the viewing happened from one of the skyrises. several of which are
around 200 meters this could add about 50 km to the first estimate of 1252 km. Alternatively, a
different calculator shows that from an altitude of 122 km, the horizon to sea level is 1328 km away, and if you are viewing from an altitude of 200 meter, it would be 1382 km.
Meteors are interesting objects, see more in
Cometary Encounters: Flash-Frozen Mammoths, Mars-Earth Discharge, Comet Venus and the 3,600-Year Cometary Cycle, and
Earth Changes and the Human-Cosmic Connection (The Secret History of the World Book 3) by Pierre Lescaudron. The second is available in
German, while both are translated into
French, and
Russian.
Comment: For the video: