"My wife and I sat on the patio and smoked. It shone well and went like an arc behind the trees. We both saw it and we were equally surprised, says Tobias Enholm from Gävle. He is one of many eyewitnesses around the country.
Bright meteor
According to Eric Stempels, astronomer at Uppsala University, it is most likely a bolid – an unusually bright meteor. Based on the trajectory that the space rock took through the atmosphere, he believes it originated in the asteroid belt between Jupiter and Saturn.
"I think the object may have been fist-sized and was travelling at a speed of 20 kilometres per second.
According to Eric Stempels, the green glow that boliden radiated does not come from the space rock itself, but from the Earth's atmosphere. When an object hits the atmosphere at high speed, the gases in front of the object heat up and begin to glow green.