English (UK)
On May 7 2022, at 04h09 UT a fireball could be registered with the SMART Project’s detector operated at Calar Alto (Almería), Sierra Nevada (Granada), La Sagra (Granada), Huelva, Ayora (Valencia) and La Hita (Toledo) observatories.
Besides, on May 09 another event took place on our skies. Please, read more to know the origin of this nice event.
Calar Alto Observatory (Almería) external cameras could also register both objects.
The object on May 7 was a fireball with cometary origin. The luminous part of the event started at an altitude of 108 km on Cuenca province (mid-south Spain). The fireball then moved northeastward and finished at an altitude of 74 km above the ground. The initial speed of this object was 138.000 km/h. The path this fireball followed above the ground is shown on the left image.
The second event on May 9 was not a natural object but a spacecraft. This time it was the Chinese spacecraft Tianzhou 4 maneuvering to dock with the Chinese space station.
Below are the videos of the fireball (the first two) and the spaceship. The third video is accelerated to 4x and shows the complete path of this spacecraft that could be seen from Calar Alto Observatory in Almería, registered with two of its external cameras.The spaceship starts on the bottom-right part of the image.
Calar Alto (CAHA) fireball detection station, together with the one at the Observatory of Sierra Nevada (IAA-CSIC) and others placed at different locations in Spain, are part of the S.M.A.R.T. project led by Professor José María Madiedo (IAA) to track that kind of objects. Specifically, Calar Alto (CAHA) station and the one at Sierra Nevada (IAA-CSIC) constitute a collaboration agreement between the IAA researcher José María Madiedo and both institutions.
