A Green Fireball Briefly Joined an Erupting Mayon Volcano on Camera

Late on May 25, 2026, monitoring cameras caught an event that combined two dramatic forces in one frame. Mount Mayon volcano in Albay province on Luzon had already been sending streams of glowing lava down its slopes for months. Staff at the Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology kept watch through equipment positioned on Lignon Hill in Legazpi City, including a color camera that records activity around the clock.

Around 10:33 p.m. local time, a bright green ball plummeted into the high sky from the color feed. It expanded out into a brilliant streak before zooming down as if it were heading straight for the volcano, as the entire thing appeared to be careening in that direction. Then, in a flash, it blazed brightly before disappearing completely. That whole burn lasted only around one second: the first thought for many people who saw the clip was, did this thing actually reach the slopes?

Teams examined every piece of data available, including seismic instruments, infrasound detectors, and footage from other cameras, all of which pointed to the same conclusion: that object never touched the earth and did not even make it to the volcano. It simply split apart high in the atmosphere. A little later, the Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology issued a statement claiming that they had witnessed no impact and that what they were seeing was so visually spectacular because the volcano was right there in the foreground.

These fireballs are caused by small asteroids or comets being blasted into the atmosphere at great speeds, as friction with the air generates a lot of heat and converts the surrounding air into a bright, flaming plasma. The green color comes from the combination of speed, composition, and atmospheric conditions in that brief time. In this case, the green stood out against the constant stream of red and orange lava flows below.

Bill Cooke, the head of NASA’s Meteoroid Environments Office, described it as simply a beautiful video of an unusual coincidence; a volcanologist who saw it described the juxtaposition of this sudden streak from above and all that lava moving steadily along below as a clear clash of two very powerful natural forces. Another of the scientists remarked that this small shard, roughly the size of a coffee cup, briefly managed to divert everyone’s attention away from the much larger volcanic spectacle going on.
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