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[Chicago Astronomer - Astro Joe]

Record meteorite hit Norway

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

Peter Bruvold witnessed the meteorite streaking across the night sky.

PHOTO: PETER BRUVOLD

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 Jørgen Røed Ødegaard told Aftenposten.no.

Røed Ødegaard 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," Røed Ødegaard 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," Røed Ødegaard said, and urged members of the public who saw the object or may have found remnants to contact the Institute of Astrophysics.

Source from Astromart: www.astromart.com/news/news.asp?news_id=522

And this from UPI:

Large meteorite hits northern Norway

OSLO, Norway (UPI) -- A large meteorite struck in northern Norway this week, landing with an impact an astronomer compared to the atomic bomb used at Hiroshima.

The meteorite appeared as a ball of fire just after 2 a.m. Wednesday, visible across several hundred miles in the sunlit summer sky above the Arctic Circle, Aftenposten reported.

Peter Bruvold, a farmer, said he happened to be out in the fields with a camera because he was tending a foaling mare and he photographed the fireball.

'I saw a brilliant flash of light in the sky, and this became a light with a tail of smoke,' Bruvold said. '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.'

The meteor struck a mountainside in Reisadalen.

Knut Jorgen Roed Odegaard, the country`s leading astronomer, said he expects the meteor to prove to be the largest to hit Norway in modern times, even bigger than the 198-pound Alta meteorite of 1904.

'If the meteorite was as large as it seems to have been, we can compare it to the Hiroshima bomb,' he said. 'Of course the meteorite is not radioactive, but in explosive force we may be able to compare it to the bomb.'

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Now why, hasn't the U.S. Media picked up this story? For such a large event, it's much too quiet.

How come, eh?

[Chicago Astronomer - Astro Joe]

From the Aftenpoften Norwegen News

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

The map shows the meteorite's direction of fall (the arrow) and the possible impact area over Troms and Finnmark counties.

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

[Chicago Astronomer - Astro Joe]

Second meteorite in a month hits Norway!

A meteorite weighing about 4 pounds landed in western Norway during the weekend -- the second meteoritic impact in Norway within a month.

The meteorite, creating a crater about 10 inches deep, landed Sunday in the yard of a home, but caused no injuries or damage.

University of Stavanger Professor Per Amund Amundsen, a member of the Stavanger Astronomy Society, told Aftenposten meteorites land in Norway as often as every month, but most are never found. He called the incident "extremely exciting."

The meteorite might a valuable sales object, Aftenposten said, noting prices on the Internet for other meteorites ranged to more than $100,000.

Source: www.physorg.com/news71808279.html

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Now...why the news blackout on these incredible meteor hits on the main news sources?...

[Chicago Astronomer - Astro Joe]

Norwegian meteorite impact site located

Norwegian scientists say they've determined where a meteorite struck ground last week and now researchers are debating its impact.

The meteorite struck the Norwegian county of Nord-Troms in the valley of Reisadalen, Aftenposten reported Monday.

Knut Jørgen Røed Ødegaard, an astronomer at the University of Oslo, told Aftenposten the meteorite might have had the same impact as the atomic bomb that exploded at Hiroshima in 1945, although the meteorite emitted no radioactivity.

But Truls Lynne Hansen of Norway's Northern Lights Observatory called that an exaggeration.

"Our atmosphere is peppered with small stones from outer space all the time," Hansen told the newspaper, saying he believes the stone that struck northern Norway weighed only approximately 26 pounds.

Source: www.physorg.com/news69338415.html

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[Chicago Astronomer - Astro Joe]

Astronomer apologizes for meteorite fuss

A professor at the Institute for Theoretical Astrophysics at the University of Oslo has issued an editorial apology for what he called "exaggerated explosive force" linked to reports of the recent meteorite strike in Norway.

The story of the meteorite impact in northern Norway made international headlines, no doubt due to the comparison with the force of the atom bomb detonated over Hiroshima. In an editorial at Norwegian science news site forskning.no, Professor Kaare Aksnes said it was regrettable that this comparison had been made, and that it was extremely exaggerated. Aksnes also said it was regrettable that the statement had apparently emanated from the Institute.

Aksnes goes on to explain that a meteor capable of a Hiroshima-like impact would almost completely burn up as it entered Earth's atmosphere, and that the remnants would hit the earth far too slowly - though impacts of that intensity have of course occurred. He estimates the North Troms impact to have been comparable to "a powerful conventional bomb".

The original reactions to the witness reports of the meteor, also reported on forskning.no, are attributed to popular astronomer Knut Jørgen Røed Ødegaard, and were slightly guarded and very excited. Røed Ødegaard wrote the original report about the meteorite on the Institute's web site.

"We cannot be completely sure, but the light and sound phenomena were exceptional. It indicates that there has been a great deal of energy involved," Røed Ødegaard said then.

Seismic research center NORSAR registered powerful sound phenomena at their Karasjok measuring station, as well as seismic disturbances.

"We have run out of words for how exciting this is," Røed Ødegaard said at the time.

"There is midnight sun in the area and objects in the sky must therefore shine very strongly to be visible at all. The object is descried as a reddish ball of fire and lit up like a powerful flash. The brightness must have been exceptional," Røed Ødegaard said.

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Maybe the excitement got to them.