[meteorite-list] Meteorite Fall in Norway?

From: Ron Baalke <baalke_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Fri Jun 9 12:59:38 2006
Message-ID: <200606091657.JAA06470_at_zagami.jpl.nasa.gov>

http://www.aftenposten.no/english/local/article1346411.ece

Record meteorite hit Norway
Aftenpoften (Norway)
June 9, 2006

As Wednesday morning dawned, northern Norway was hit with an impact
comparable to the atomic bomb used on Hiroshima.

At around 2:05 a.m. on Wednesday, residents of the northern part of
Troms and the western areas of Finnmark could clearly see a ball of fire
taking several seconds to travel across the sky.

A few minutes later an impact could be heard and geophysics and
seismology research foundation NORSAR registered a powerful sound and
seismic disturbances at 02:13.25 a.m. at their station in Karasjok.

Farmer Peter Bruvold was out on his farm in Lyngseidet with a camera
because his mare Virika was about to foal for the first time.

"I saw a brilliant flash of light in the sky, and this became a light
with a tail of smoke," Bruvold told Aftenposten.no. He photographed the
object and then continued to tend to his animals when he heard an
enormous crash.

"I heard the bang seven minutes later. It sounded like when you set off
a solid charge of dynamite a kilometer (0.62 miles) away," Bruvold said.

Astronomers were excited by the news.

"There were ground tremors, a house shook and a curtain was blown into
the house," Norway's best known astronomer Knut J?rgen R?ed ?degaard
told Aftenposten.no.

R?ed ?degaard said the meteorite was visible to an area of several
hundred kilometers despite the brightness of the midnight sunlit summer
sky. The meteorite hit a mountainside in Reisadalen in North Troms.

"This is simply exceptional. I cannot imagine that we have had such a
powerful meteorite impact in Norway in modern times. If the meteorite
was as large as it seems to have been, we can compare it to the
Hiroshima bomb. Of course the meteorite is not radioactive, but in
explosive force we may be able to compare it to the (atomic) bomb," R?ed
?degaard said.

The astronomer believes the meteorite was a giant rock and probably the
largest known to have struck Norway.

"The record was the Alta meteorite that landed in 1904. That one was 90
kilos (198 lbs) but we think the meteorite that landed Wednesday was
considerably larger," R?ed ?degaard said, and urged members of the
public who saw the object or may have found remnants to contact the
Institute of Astrophysics.
Received on Fri 09 Jun 2006 12:57:13 PM PDT