A spectacular video of a bright meteor exploding in the skies above northern Croatia went viral on Friday.

According to reports, the object – which astronomers call a bolide – was first seen flashing across the sky at 10:31 am in the air above northern Croatia, close to the Slovenian border. The flash was followed by a loud thundering sound some three minutes later, which lasted for several seconds and could be heard by locals all across small towns north of Zagreb.

Croatian Astronomical Union (HAS) said on their Facebook that the bright object must have disintegrated at an altitude of at least 30 kilometres above sea level, which made the event visible from a large geographic area, from Istria in the west of the country, to northern Dalmatia and capital Zagreb.

The footage obtained by N1 television was reportedly filmed from a car driving on a road in Sesvete, an eastern suburb of Zagreb.

HAS said that pinpointing the exact location of the explosion would require analysing seismic data from Slovenian and Croatian seismological monitoring stations. No damage has been reported, and it is not yet known if any debris from the disintegrating bolide might have survived the event and the passage through Earth’s atmosphere.

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