Video: Meteor With Long Green Tail Bursts Over Missouri

In the early morning hours of Sunday, October 5, 2025, Missouri had an unexpected visitor. Backyard video captures the moment when a meteor with a long green tail soared across the state before exploding.

Dan Bush of Missouri Skies captured this long-track meteor that he calls a "stunner" at 1:41am, October 5, 2025

I checked the American Meteor Society website and there are no other reports of anyone seeing this fireball as of this writing, but that might change once they update their page. We are currently in the middle of the Orionids meteor shower which peaks around October 20. Watch Dan's capture of this meteor over Albany, Missouri as he shows it at normal speed, then frame-by-frame so you really get a good idea of what this looked like if you were fortunate enough to be looking outside in the middle of the overnight hours.

What can cause a meteor to have a green tail like this one over Missouri?

The color of a comet's tail has to do with the chemical makeup of the space rock. Green would indicate a high concentration of magnesium. Sodium can give off a yellow-orange glow, iron a yellow appearance and calcium a violet hue.