fireball
You don't have to be a fan of astronomy for one's eyes to light up when seeing a celestial phenomenon. Without prior warning, at 9.04pm on Tuesday 4 October, a fireball crossed the sky over Andalucía and Extremadura. Although it was visible in all provinces it was especially prominent in Malaga, Granada, Seville and Cordoba.

The fireball flew over the Gulf of Cadiz, but it was so bright that it could be seen from more than 700 km away.

The astronomical event was confirmed by the researcher responsible for the SMART project, the astrophysicist José María Madiedo, from the Institute of Astrophysics of Andalusia IAA-CSIC.

This type of phenomenon occurs when rocks enter the Earth's atmosphere at high speed, which in this case reached 69,000 km/h. The violent friction with the Earth's atmosphere at this enormous speed causes the rock's surface to heat up to a temperature of several thousand degrees Celsius and become incandescent, thus generating a ball of fire. The rock was completely destroyed in the atmosphere, so no fragments fell into the sea.