Security cameras captured the moment when a meteor blazed through the sky of Bucharest, Romania, with the passing fireball briefly turning the dark skies into as bright as day.
The meteor passed through Bucharest skies at 3:05 a.m. local time, emanating a flash that lit up the country's capital for a few seconds, shocking the people that were still awake at the time.
Rosa, the Romanian Space Agency, said that the meteor that caused the event was entering the atmosphere of the Earth, and was recorded with an altitude of between 31 miles and 43 miles.
Security cameras from different parts of the city, including a rooftop camera by the NxData surveillance company and a camera at Bucharest's Otopeni airport, recorded the flash of light.
However, it is currently unknown whether the meteor was able to remain intact in its entry into the Earth's atmosphere to become what is known as a meteorite, or a meteor that was able to reach the surface of the Earth.
Rosa believes that the meteor might not have become a meteorite, claiming that the space rock was likely burned up without dealing damage to structures.
Rosa revealed that the incident is actually a common one, as over 40 tons of meteoroids crash into the planet's atmosphere. These meteoroids are the debris that, when ignited by the Earth's atmosphere, become meteors. Most of the meteoroids, however, are small pieces of comet dust that do almost instantly vaporize in the atmosphere of the Earth.
If the meteor travels slow enough to prevent it from burning up too much due to friction with the atmosphere, and if it is able to make it very close to the surface, just then does it have the chance of becoming a meteorite.
An animation released by MailOnline last year showed the recorded incidents of meteorites that hit the Earth. The map of meteorite hits was developed by Simon Rogers, a data journalist, using information collected over the last thousand years.
However, most hits are unrecorded because the meteors either already blow up in the atmosphere or the meteorites hit the sea.
It is also very difficult to detect the meteorites that hit the land. One meteorite, now with scientific authorities, came from Mars, as the rock fell into Earth over 10,000 years ago. Scientists believe that the meteorite is solid magma from a volcano in Mars that erupted more than four billion years ago.
The meteorite from Mars is important because analysis by the scientists revealed that water previously flowed into the rock, depositing minerals such as carbonates, considered the building blocks of life, into it.
