Fireball spotted over Birmingham, UK
On December 30th, a bright fireball was spotted in parts of England. (Video credit: @JohnStew82/LOCAL NEWS X /TMX)
birmingham, england – An unusually bright meteor known as a fireball was spotted over Europe on Saturday, with more than 100 reports of brightly colored shooting stars over parts of Britain and France.
The video, recorded at 2:07 a.m. in Birmingham, England, showed a bright meteor screaming across the night sky with flashes of blue light.
According to the International Meteor Organization (IMO), More than 100 reports of fireballs On Saturday, people from all over England, Scotland, Wales and France gathered almost simultaneously.
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More than a dozen videos shared with IMO captured flashes of light in the sky. Witnesses described the meteor as “beautiful and bright,” and some noted that it was green in color. The color change can be caused by different metals in the metallic meteor interacting with Earth’s atmosphere and burning up.
A fireball seen over England on December 30, 2023. (Image courtesy of Chrissy Cadden/American Meteor Society)
According to the IMO sighting report, one meteor spotter said the flash was so bright it looked like “daytime.”
Another witness near London wrote: “I’ve been looking at the night sky for years hoping to see something like this. What an amazing sight.”
According to NASA, a bolide is an “unusually bright meteor” that has a visual magnitude of 3rd magnitude or higher for observers. The size of a bolide phenomenon can exceed 1 meter, and a fireball that explodes in the atmosphere is called a bolide.
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The Shibungid meteor shower is underway, with peak activity expected on January 4th. American Meteor SocietyThe Quadriids may be the most intense meteor shower of the year, but viewing is usually hampered by bad weather.
While other annual meteor showers have a one- or two-day period of peak activity, the Opulidids’ peak occurs over several hours, producing up to 120 meteors per hour, according to NASA. .