A mysterious fireball was seen streaking through the night sky over western Germany over the weekend, astronomers said on Sunday.
The bright streak lasted 5-to-7 seconds, finishing in a jade color and splitting into two smaller blips, a witness at Siegen near Bonn told the "fireball network" run by the Technical University of Berlin (TU) and the German Aerospace Center (DLR).
"Most probably it was an asteroid fragment that had entered the atmosphere," said DLR fireball expert Dieter Heinlein, positioning Saturday evening's eye-catcher roughly over Kassel city in central Germany.
According to the report, an observer from Siegen identified a bright ray traveling through the sky, which had transformed into a green jade-like color. Most of it seems to have shattered, and two tiny, brilliantly sparkling balls fell off. The sighting lasted a period of five to seven seconds.
But the sky could also be seen in northern Germany. "The sighting of a shiny object with a green tail heading from west to east. Tail 3-4 times the size of the object, with smaller sections being detached," a man from Schleswig-Holstein wrote on one page of the Gahberg Observatory (Austria).
Although most fireball incidents are brief, maybe lasting a few seconds, this thing became increasingly brighter as it dropped to the ground in almost half a minute.
Several All-Sky cameras from the AllSky7 fireball network took part in the case. The cameras with a closer viewpoint clearly display the bolide splitting up into several fireballs as it descends and burns out.
Scientists believe that two meteorites weighing up to nine pounds might have made it to the ground, but they presumably dropped in a mountainous area, "so finding meteorites is going to be quite complicated."
Fireballs occur on average 30 times a year around Europe-brighter and longer than "shooting star" glimpses-and, particularly in November and December, according to the DLR website.
A similar suspected fragment was sighted over Austria on Nov. 19.
Several all-eye cameras installed in Berlin caught a blinding fireball in October 2015, confirmed by several witnesses across eastern Germany and neighboring Poland.
Asteroids, according to DLR, are tiny remnants of the phase of planetary development of our solar system, now mainly orbiting between Mars and Jupiter.
Collisions in the so-called asteroid belt produce asteroids that enter Earth.
Tips for the detection of a fragment that crash-land, the so-called meteorite, are also given on the DLR website, including very heavy mass, magnetic quality, and smooth surface.
