A video of a fireball glowing bright green over the Turkish city of Izmir has gone viral on social networking sites.
The fireball after being spotted in the sky disappeared behind the landscape before hitting the ground at around 2:00 am on Saturday
Eyewitnesses said they heard a loud explosion as the fireball hit the ground with some suggesting that it could have been a meteorite, a satellite, or an UFO.
Hassan Ali Dal, astrophysics professor, said in a Twitter post: “The mysterious object is a fireball which usually appears when a meteor starts to burn in the atmosphere.”
He added that meteors routinely burn in the upper atmosphere and there also appear periods of meteor rain stating that Earth is currently witnessing a “Persid meteor shower.”
Every year throughout July and August the earth intersects with the debris remaining from the comet Swift-Tuttle where meteors travel at about 133,200 miles/h.
Dal said that meteorites burn in the earth’s atmosphere and only a few collide with the Earth while 50 meteorites can be spotted per hour during their peak in the sky.
The green color of the meteors, he said, was on account of large amounts of nickel. (AW)
Meteor fell on #Izmir city southern #Turkey pic.twitter.com/MTGjVIqe4M
— Asaad Hanna (@AsaadHannaa) August 2, 2021
