![\"Cosmic](\"http:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/01\/Cosmic_caller_goes_out_with_a_bang_card_full.jpg\")
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On 21 January, a foreign body crashed to Earth causing a cascade of bright light to trail through the sky.<\/p>\n
The fleeting flash was a fireball, defined as a meteor brighter than the planet Venus. Such bright meteors are caused as small asteroids strike the atmosphere, entirely or almost entirely burning up due to friction, sometimes suddenly exploding.<\/p>\n
Every day, roughly 54 tonnes of extra-terrestrial material reaches Earth, including interplanetary dust, meteoroids<\/a> and asteroids. Fireballs like this one are estimated to strike Earth hundreds of times every year, however not all are caught on camera or shine so brightly.<\/p>\n From the brightness of this fireball, around the time of a full moon, experts have deduced that the original object could have ranged from tens of centimetres to a metre in size, depending on its entry speed, composition and other characteristics.<\/p>\n This impressive shot was captured by photographer Chris Small at the seaside resort town of Bude, northeast Cornwall, England, at 23:24 UTC.<\/p>\n “I see a lot of meteors due to spending so long shooting the night sky, but I\u2019ve never seen anything quite like that before!”<\/i>\u00a0says Chris.<\/p>\n “It was incredible, and lit up the entire coast almost as bright as daytime for a few seconds. There were beautiful green and blue colours.”<\/i><\/p>\n While the foreground is filled with lobster pots used by local fishermen, the background is lit up with this green-blue tinge, revealing the presence of oxygen in Earth\u2019s atmosphere. As the air surrounding the burning ball heats up, atoms become \u2018excited\u2019, with oxygen emitting light at a frequency of about 558 nm\u00a0\u2013 in the blue-green part of the visible spectrum.<\/p>\n This colourful effect is also the reason for the beautiful aurorae at Earth\u2019s poles, caused as charged particles from the Sun strike and excite atoms in the upper atmosphere.<\/p>\n The fireball in this image was spotted by at least five observers across the UK, who reported it to the International Meteor Organization<\/a>\u00a0\u2013\u00a0an organisation set up to collect meteor observations from around the world.<\/p>\n A new ESA warning system called NEMO (NEar-real time MOnitor) also picked up the event shortly after it happened. The NEMO system tracks social media activity to build a near real-time picture of fireball events around the globe, and is part\u00a0of the Agency’s Planetary Defence Office<\/a>.<\/p>\n Find more of Chris’ photography on his website,\u00a0Ocean And Earth Photography<\/a>.<\/p>\n