Fireball Above Tenerife

On 2021 March 10 at 1:57 AM at the top of La Palma a few kilometers away from Roque de Los Muchachos Observatory, at about 2200 meter above the ocean a sea of clouds were below me. My camera was pointed to Tenerife with its huge Mt. Teide volcano, the Spains highest mountain. I set a timelapse to show the rising Milky Way followed by the crescent moon. Because of the dusk-to-dawn curfew I leave the Camera alone the whole night and was surprised the next day because of a strange peak in the luminance curve that LRTimelapse software showed me – scrolling to picture number 1433 I was stumbled over this fantastic bright meteor approaching to Tenerife. Checking the next pictures – Tenerife was still there 😉

It might be a common iron-nickel meteor which causes the intense greenish glow from the vaporized outer layer while traveling to the atmosphere. Following the trail back it points to constellation Virgo – so probably it’s a meteor from the weak Virginids meteor shower. Because of a slight Calima (dust from Sahara desert which regularly is blown to the Canary Islands) the seeing was not the best near to the horizon, but we can recognize the Antares region rising just right of the meteor.

The picture is a cropped frame from a single photo of the timelapse sequence with Sony A7rIII and Samyang 85 f1.2 at f 1.8,  6s exposure at ISO 4000 and only usual adjustments in Lightroom and noise reduction in PS. The second image shows a screenshot from LRTimelapse with the RAW-look of the shot. I captured the meteor also on another timelapse with 14 mm wide angle but for sure this one is more impressive!