☄️ Spectacular: a meteor explodes above an erupting volcano

On May 25, Earth and space met in the most spectacular way possible. Above Mount Mayon, an erupting volcano in the Philippines, a bright green meteor streaked across the sky before exploding. This double spectacle was captured by surveillance cameras.


Mount Mayon is famous for its almost perfect cone, but also for its great geological instability. As it spewed rivers of glowing lava that evening, the sky suddenly lit up. This temporal coincidence between a magmatic anger from the depths of the Earth and an intruder from the far reaches of the solar system remains an event of absolute rarity.

The meteor in question was what astronomers call a bolide, a particularly large and bright shooting star. Its exceptionally vivid emerald green hue indicates a high concentration of metals such as nickel and magnesium. Penetrating the atmosphere at high speed, friction compressed the air, drastically increasing the temperature until it caused an explosive thermal disintegration.


Faced with the images, many internet users first thought of a direct impact on the volcano's slopes. However, the Philippine space agency quickly corrected this perception. The bolide actually disintegrated at several tens of miles (tens of kilometers) altitude. If the object had hit the ground, the region's seismic sensors would have immediately recorded very distinct tremors.

For scientists, obtaining such a visual recording is a real boon. Two live video streams were monitoring the continuous eruptive activity of Mount Mayon at the precise moment of the cosmic flash. These fortuitous data offer a unique opportunity to analyze the meteor's trajectory by triangulation. They also allow studying the diffusion of its light through the volcanic ash plume.