- A bright fireball was seen across Western Europe on March 8 evening, lasting six seconds
- The fireball broke into pieces near 18:55 CET and was captured on cameras and phones
- Small meteorite fragments reportedly hit a house in Koblenz, Germany, with no injuries
A bright fireball streaked across the skies of Western Europe Sunday evening (March 8), witnessed by people in Belgium, France, Germany, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands. The mysterious light left a trail of excitement and curiosity among those who witnessed it as they shared videos and photos on social media, asking what it was. The fireball, estimated to be a few meters in diameter, moved from southwest to northeast, glowing for about six seconds before fracturing into pieces at approximately 18:55 CET (17:55 UTC). The event was captured by meteor cameras, mobile phones, and other cameras, with some observers reporting audible sounds.
Although it's not clear what exactly it was, one house was reported to have been struck by small pieces of the resulting meteorites in the city of Koblenz in the west of Germany. There are no reported injuries.
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Now, the Planetary Defense team of the European Space Agency (ESA) has launched a probe to analyse the fireball. "The Planetary Defence team in ESA's Space Safety Programme is using all available data to estimate the size of the object. They currently assess it to have been up to a few metres in diameter," the space agency wrote on its website.
According to a report by Space.com, over 2,800 sightings of the fireball were reported to the International Meteor Organization (IMO). Residents shared dozens of videos and images on social media.
"A meteor just decomposed in front of my eyes," one user shared a photo on X (formerly Twitter).
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Is it unusual?
The space agency stated that the timing and direction of the impact suggest that the "object was likely not visible to any of the large-scale telescope sky surveys that scan the night sky for such objects".
But overall, it's not unusual, the agency said, adding that there have only been 11 successful detections of natural space objects before their atmospheric entry so far.
"Small objects approaching Earth from brighter, daytime regions of the sky (even around dusk, as in this case) are missed in most cases," wrote ESA.
ESA's Planetary Defence team is working to improve detection rates for such objects through initiatives like the Flyeye asteroid survey telescope project.
