[meteorite-list] New fall in Spain

From: Pekka Savolainen <pekka.savolainen_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Thu Apr 22 10:31:58 2004
Message-ID: <3FF982DA.1060702_at_dlc.fi>

http://babelfish.altavista.com/babelfish/urltrurl?lp=es_en&url=http://www.humanitas-international.org/newstran/newsdesk-spanish.htm

Monday, 05 of January of 2004
Updated to the 15:40 (CET) - Internet Time _at_652 by [Swatch]
 
 

RAIN OF ' BALLS OF FUEGÓ FROM GALICIA To VALENCIA
They look for the rest of the meteorite that fell yesterday between
Palencia and Leon

According to the geologist Jesus Marti'nez-Fri'as, of the Center of
Astrobiologi'a (CAB), the meteorite could have the size ' of a villa '

ELMUNDO.ES | AGENCIES




MADRID. - The Civil Guard looks for in a zone of 25 kilometers between
Leon and Palencia the rest of the meteorite that fell yesterday in the
limit of both provinces. Hundreds of Spaniards saw ' balls of fuegó
yesterday cross the sky in Madrid, Albacete, Valencia , Castellón, Leon,
Palencia, Teruel, Balearic , To Corunna, Lugo, Ourense and Pontevedra.

The authorities and diverse scientific institutes of all Spain have
given by fact that the event has been caused by the fall and
disintegration of a meteorite.

The director of the Observatory of Astronomy "Ramon Maria Aller" of
Santiago, Jose Docobo Angel, explained that the meteorite could have "an
important initial mass, between fifty and one hundred tons ".

Docobo explained that the bolide could explode at some moment of the
passage and that this one deflagration was visible because it took place
"to certain height, between the fifty and one hundred kilometers of height".

The geologist Jesus Marti'nez-Fri'as, person in charge of the Laboratory
of Certification and Meteorite Identification of the CAB, said that the
fall of these Earth objects is not exceptional and needed that in many
cases they cause "deceptive" a visual effect on his dimensions.

Marti'nez-Fri'as emphasized that the fact that the sightings have
followed one another in places very moved away to each other aims at
that it is an object "of great dimensions", and it ventured itself to
clarify that it could have the size "of a villa".

The people in charge of this investigating center have requested to
participate in the tasks search of the possible rest of meteorites.
Marti'nez-Fri'as insisted on the scientific importance to study this
object or its rest, and appealed for that reason to the conscience of
the citizens so that, if they find some of those rest, they make them
available of the official institutions and do not choose to keep them.

<http://www.elmundo.es/elmundo/2004/graficos/ene/s2/impactos_meteorito.gif>
On the other hand the National Institute of Meteorology informed into
which with the means that east center tells - radars and images by
satellite "nothing outside the normal thing was detected" and
practically discarded that it is some well-known atmosphericphenomenon.

Search of the greater fragment

This morning, the Civil Guard of Leon has intensified, with the aid of a
helicopter, the search of the meteorite fragment that apparently fell in
the limit of the province of Leon and Palencia.

Around some thirty agents of the Military institution they continued
during all the night workings search in the east of the province of Leon
and the northwest of the one of Palencia, specially, between the leonine
locality of Renedo de Valderaduey and the palentina of I keep.

In this geographic strip, of about twenty-five kilometers in length, the
neighbors alerted yesterday in the evening to the Civil Guard and the
service of telephone attention of the 112 of the presence of a "great
fire ball that left a wake silver-plated" and that, later, originated a
strong followed explosion of a earth tremor.

Ocal sources confirmed to Efe that this circumstance could feel in the
locality of Renedo de Valderaduey, "where the crystals, the doors and
the Earth moved minutes after to have listened to a strong explosion".

The Civil Guard studies the possibility that this last sound could be
related to the speed at which the meteorite furrowed the sky, over the
sound barrier, although the fact that in a radius of about fifty
kilometers to the round one a earth tremor was registered makes think
that fell to earth, about a place that has still not been located.

It was not the only place where the meteorite could hit with the Earth.
Yesterday in the evening, the firemen had to take part to extinguish a
fire in the castellonense locality of Cabanes, behind the discoteca '
Pirámidé in the highway towards Oropesa. Also in the province of
Castellón, between the municipalities of Nules and Vall d' Uxo, small
fires due to the fall of the balls were registered.

 From the football ground

The fire balls also were seen in the four provinces of Galicia. The
spectators who attended the party which they disputed in the stage San
Lazaro of Santiago de Compostela the local equipment and San Sebastián
of the Kings also has been able to sight the strange phenomenon.

Jose Docobo Angel, director of the Astronomical observatory ' Ramon
Maria Aller', of the University of Santiago, that attended that party,
explained that he could be a natural phenomenon, a cosmic stone that was
moving around the sun and that, in its way, was with the Earth and, when
entering her, it fragmented producing the effect that could be seen.

Docobo remembered that in 1996 the Astronomical observatory ' Ramon
Aller' made a study exhaustive of a similar phenomenon, although caused
by a stone of 10 tons. In this occasion, the expert thinks that he could
be a bolide of between 50 and 100 tons of weight since he has seen
himself in many places of Spain and to total light of the day.

Another one of the hypotheses that the scientist shuffled is that
outside the entrance in the atmosphere of some artificial object , like
some rest of rocket or satellite, option this one that, in its opinion,
is less probable.

To first hour of late of hundreds of neighbors of the North zone of the
Community of Madrid yesterday they called al 112, to the Police and the
Civil Guard to inform of which they had seen ' balls of fuegó in the sky
by the zone of the Mountain range. According to it could know
elmundo.es, neighbors of Albacete, Valencia, Palencia, Teruel and
Baleares also alerted to the services of emergency by the same event
between the 18,00 and 19,00 hours.

AENA assured that it did not have certainty of which some problem in the
air operations had taken place, although the control tower of the
airport of Madrid-Barajas was put in contact in average afternoon with
Territorial the Weather station to inquire on this phenomenon. Iberia
has not either received any notification of its pilots on this phenomenon.

-- 

Received on Mon 05 Jan 2004 10:29:30 AM PST