On May 25, a fireball plunged through the night sky over Mayon volcano in the Philippines, briefly outshining the lava flows from its eruption. The streak was captured by webcams from afarTV and the Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology. NASA's Bill Cooke called it "a gorgeous video of an unusual coincidence."

Mayon, the country's most active volcano, had been erupting for days. Thousands fled shelters in early May after explosive ash outbursts. The fireball, likely the size of a coffee cup, self-destructed high in the atmosphere and almost certainly left no debris behind. Andy Rivkin, a planetary scientist at Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, noted the dramatic juxtaposition of two powerful natural forces.

The footage raises questions about the object's origin. A green tint in the video appears to be a camera artifact, not a chemical signature. Determining whether the object came from an asteroid or comet would require multiple camera angles. Rebecca Williams, a volcanologist at the University of Hull, said the scene mirrored early Earth conditions, where both asteroids and volcanoes shaped the planet's atmosphere and oceans.