[meteorite-list] Police Hunt Meteorite Fragments In Spain

From: Ron Baalke <baalke_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Thu Apr 22 10:31:58 2004
Message-ID: <200401052224.OAA21447_at_zagami.jpl.nasa.gov>

http://www.theadvertiser.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5936,8330888%255E1702,00.html

Police hunt meteorite fragments
The Advertiser (Australia)
>From correspondents in Madrid
January 6, 2004

SPANISH police were combing parts of the country today after thousands of
people reported seeing a "ball of fire" in the sky, prompting astronomers
to speculate fragments had broken off a large meteorite.

Residents from areas as far apart as the northwestern coast and the south
east Mediterranean coast had telephoned police to report seeing "a big ball
of fire" roaring across the skies yesterday evening.

Experts believe the meteorite discharged some fragments into the atmosphere
as it hurtled through space.

Police were concentrating their search for the fragments around Leon and
Palencia in central Spain, the area above which the meteorite is believed to
have disintegrated falling over as many as seven regions in an arc running
from the northwest to the south east of central Spain.

Jose Angel Docobo, director of Spain's astronomy observatory in the western
city of Santiago de Compostela, said the debris could have come from a
meteorite weighing from 50 to 100 tonnes before disintegration.

His observatory carried out a study eight years ago on a similar incident
when a meteorite weighing an estimated 10 tonnes dropped debris over Spain.

Docobo believes the largest of the fragments, thought to be strewn over a
radius of 100km, fell near the town of Molina de Aragon, near Guadalajara,
54km north of Madrid.
Received on Mon 05 Jan 2004 05:24:31 PM PST