Perseid meteor fireball
© YouTube/Meteors (screen capture)
This stunning Perseid fireball was recorded over Spain on 2021 July 31, at 23:18h local time. It was produced by a fragment (a meteoroid) from Comet Swift-Tuttle that impacted the atmosphere at about 210.000 km/h. The fireball began at a height of about 139 km and ended at an altitude of around 81 km above the ground level. The event was recorded in the framework of the SMART project, operated by the Southwestern Europe Meteor Network (SWEMN), from the meteor-observing stations located at La Hita (Toledo), La Sagra (Granada), Sevilla, and Madrid (Dr. Jaime Izquierdo, Complutense University of Madrid). The event has been analyzed by the principal investigator of the SMART project: Dr. Jose M. Madiedo, from the Institute of Astrophysics of Andalusia (IAA-CSIC).