Videos Shows Meteor Explosion Turning Sky an Eerie Green

Onlookers claimed the meteor was anything ranging from advanced weaponry to aliens.

Meteor Shower

Last Saturday night, a meteor burned its way into the atmosphere and caused an explosion that appeared to light the night sky over İzmir, Turkey an eerie shade of green. Here's a compilation of videos showing the strange event:

The fireball and explosion gained a lot of attention on Twitter, with various onlookers sharing footage of the briefly-illuminated night sky.

Of course, those same posts were filled with conspiracy theories about aliens vessels and advanced orbital weaponry — who can blame them when they just watched that display? — but a prominent astrophysicist later clarified that the explosion was an uncommon but perfectly explicable meteor incinerating upon entry.

Dodging Fireballs

In reality, the explosion was likely a typical meteor that strayed too close to the Earth and managed to survive longer and reach closer to Earth than the average space rock, astrophysicist and associate director of the Ege University Observatory in Turkey Hasan Ali Dal explained on Twitter.

He added that these sorts of explosions, though certainly dramatic, can be expected around this time of year when the annual Perseid Meteor Shower cranks up to full swing.

As for how the blast might have lit the sky green, it's possible that it was due to nickel content in the space rock. But it could also have been a result of atmospheric conditions, or even a camera artifact — though the multiple angles of the blast, all showing the same strange shade, probably make that explanation less likely.

Unfortunately, that means that there were no aliens involved in the green fireball, nor was this a test of some top-secret SpaceX weapon, as another conspiratorial tweet that we don't need to link here claimed. But for the casual onlookers, that shouldn't make the natural fireworks show any less exciting to sit back and watch — from as far away as possible, that is.

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