Watch a brilliant ‘fireball’ meteor explode over China on May 28 (video)

Residents of Maoming, China were treated to a celestial light show earlier this week when a surprise fireball burst to life overhead, illuminating the city before disappearing in an intense flare of light.

The fireball burned up over the southern Chinese province of Guangdong at 9:33 p.m. local time on May 28, according to multiple dashcam videos that have circulated online in the wake of the event. The videos show the meteor make a dramatic 5-second journey through the night sky, during which it changed color from a pale green-blue hue to an intense burst of orange-yellow light. This particular fireball may have been a bolide – a special meteor that breaks apart with a dramatic flash of light.

A fireball is the name given when a relatively large meteor – over 1 millimeter in diameter – collides with Earth’s atmosphere, triggering a fleeting flare of light that can outshine the planets themselves in the night sky. The color of a burning meteor is determined by a number of factors such as its speed, composition and how it compresses the air in its path, according to the American Meteor Society.

Bright, reddish flashes of light can arise when fast-moving meteors strike the atmosphere at tens of thousands of miles per hour, compressing the air in front of them. This process causes them to glow brightly in the night sky and has the potential to force atmospheric nitrogen and oxygen atoms trapped in the meteor’s path to release an abundance of reddish light, according to NASA. Meteors with a high sodium content also have a tendency to burn with an orange-yellow light.

No major meteor showers were active on the night in question, so it’s likely that the Maoming City fireball was born of a ‘sporadic meteor’ – a random piece of space debris left over from the creation of the solar system that happened to collide with Earth on May 28.

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