English (UK)
At 21h58 UT of last night of August 12th, a nice Perseid flew above Castilla y León (center Spain) skies.
This fireball was registered with the SMART Project’s detector operated at Calar Alto (Almería), Sierra Nevada (Granada), La Sagra (Granada), La Hita (Toledo), Huelva and Seville observatories.
One of the external surveillance cameras operated at Calar Alto Observatory (Almería) also registered this event, demonstrating the impressive transparency of Calar Alto Skies, being able to clearly seeing these objects happening 500 km away from the observatory, with normal cameras.
Following the preliminary analysis carried out by Professor José María Madiedo (Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía IAA-CSIC), and SMART project's PI, this event had an cometary (Swift-Tuttle) origin, and was caused by a rock which impacted against our atmosphere at an estimated speed of 210.000 km/h.
The luminous part of the phenomena started at an altitude of 130 km above Segovia province in Castilla y León region. Then the object moved southwestward, crossing the east part of Avila province (Castilla y León), and finishing once on the north of Toledo province (Castilla La Mancha) at an altitude of 75 km above the ground.
The image shows the path this fireball followed above the center of Spain.
Below are the video that could be registered with the external surveillance camera operated at Calar Alto Observatory in Almería (South Spain), about 500 km away where this event happened.
Calar Alto (CAHA) fireball detection station, together with the one at the Observatory of Sierra Nevada (IAA-CSIC) and others placed at different locations in Spain, are part of the S.M.A.R.T. project led by Professor José María Madiedo (IAA) to track that kind of objects. Specifically, Calar Alto (CAHA) station and the one at Sierra Nevada (IAA-CSIC) constitute a collaboration agreement between the IAA researcher José María Madiedo and both institutions.
