[meteorite-list] A rocky meteorite probably fell down in the North Sea.

From: (wrong string) ørn Sørheim <bsoerhei_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Thu Apr 22 10:32:05 2004
Message-ID: <200401212050.VAA10941_at_mail48-s.fg.online.no>

I have some information to add about this 17th January 9:00 a.m.
case which I recently posted.

There are now at least 2 articles online about this story:
http://aftenbladet.no/nyheter/lokalt/article.jhtml?articleID=186681
http://aftenbladet.no/nyheter/lokalt/article.jhtml?articleID=186854

They are in norwegian only, but please look at the picture.
The resolution is bad, but the colors are correct.
What do you folks get out of it?
Very strange colors for an airliner contrail, I would think!?

Also some detailed information from a distant observer have now
come forward.
Relative to the location of the video-photographer, (from which the photo
in the above two articles have been grabbed) he is placed ~60 deg.
apart. The distance between them is about 175 km. His location is the town
of Lillesand east of Kristiansand on the coast. He called a radio station
saying an aeroplane had exploded in mid-air.
The 1st observer in Sandnes gives a rough azimuth direction of SE (=135 deg.).
The 2nd observer in Lillesand gives a direction of S-SW (=202.5 deg.).
It is possible to refine this values, but the general area now seems to
be fixed.

The meeting of the two sighting lines is a point 40-50 km S-SSE of the
regional main capital of Kristiansand, but alas over the ocean (Skagerak)!
This might explain why no booms have been reported so far - as I know of.

A very interesting piece of information is that the observer in Lillesand
says the dark end part of the cloud is pointing more or less straight downwards.

This effectively excludes an aeroplane in this case.
 
He also observed it very high in the sky.
His explaination of the cloud is very similar to the photos.

Unfortunately the case has possibly been destroyed in Norway, because the
newspaper called two astronomers which has no experiences with meteor
science. One is a well know solar researcher, the other's speciality is
nuclear reactions in stars.
They automatically exclaimed: Ah, contrail!

Regards,
Bjørn Sørheim
Received on Wed 21 Jan 2004 03:50:05 PM PST