Mysterious blue meteor soars over Spain and Portugal in stunning footage

Not long after the UK was mystified by the Northern Lights (or, to give it its proper name, the Aurora Borealis) over the past few weeks, Spain and Portugal witnessed a stunning meteor over their skies on Saturday.

Social media footage of the astronomical event shows the meteor emitting a bright blue light as it shoots overhead before changing to a bigger, greener hue as it shrinks in size.

It was also picked up by European Space Agency (ESA) cameras in Spain with the organisation writing on X / Twitter on Sunday its Planetary Defence Office is “currently analysing the size and trajectory of the object to assess the chance that any material made it to the surface”.

An update came just a few hours later when the ESA said the object appears to have been part of a comet.

“We estimate that it flew over Spain and Portugal travelling at ~45km/s before burning up over the Atlantic Ocean at an altitude of ~60km.

“The likelihood of any meteorites being found is very low,” it said.

Nevertheless, the videos doing the rounds on X / Twitter have left social media users awestruck.

The meteor follows the Northern Lights being visible across most of the UK last weekend as a result of a severe solar storm from the Sun which collides with gasses in the Earth’s atmosphere located near its magnetic poles – hence the name.

The breathtaking display even reached as far south as France.

And a Met Office expert has said more displays could take place in the next 10 to 12 days, due to a region of sunspots which will rotate back towards the Earth and potentially lead to more mass ejections.

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