Video follows. On the evening of Nov. 16th, aurora tour guide Tony Bateman of northern Finland was indoors, warming up between auroras, when his surroundings began to vibrate. “There was a huge bang and the cottage shook violently,” he reports. “At first I thought it was an earthquake. Or maybe a tree fell on the cottage roof! I walked outside and inspected the trees. Everything looked okay.” A quick replay of his aurora webcam solved the mystery. “It was an incredible meteor,” he says.
“It gave me goosebumps to see the night sky turn blue as the meteor exploded,” he says. “Auroras and a fireball–what a night!”
Here is video captured buy a camera used to monitor Auroras:
He adds:
Huge meteor burn up. I was sat [sic] about 10 metres to the left of the camera and felt a huge shockwave. It shook the cottage.
This week Earth has been moving through a stream of debris from Comet Encke, source of the annual Taurid meteor shower. Taurids are rich in fireballs. However, the trajectory of this meteor suggests it was no Taurid.
It appears to have been a sporadic–that is, a random meteor from no particular comet. Every day, Earth is peppered with sporadic meteors from a diffuse swarm filling the inner solar system. NASA statistics show that sporadic fireballs as bright as Venus appear somewhere on Earth more than 100 times daily. Fireballs as bright as a quarter Moon occur once every ten days, and fireballs as bright as a full Moon once every few months or so. The Arctic fireball of Nov. 16th belongs in the rarest of those three categories–a lucky catch, indeed.
Source: NASA’s Spaceweather.com
Cool!
That was brighter than a full moon. They need a fourth category.
If anything I’m worried about, it’s an asteroid impact. Even moreso than the risk of getting mugged or in a car accident.
Same observation i nothern Norway. The police called the most famous astrophysicist in the counrty !
Oh we love you, neighbors. Keep the flag up!
(Sorry)
I recall when the Chelyabinsk meteor, a superbolide caused by an approximately 20-metre near-Earth asteroid that entered Earth’s atmosphere over Russia on 15 February 2013 that President Putin first speculated that the USA was behind re-directing to it to Russia. Perhaps Vlad is just a bit paranoid these days, but sure would make for a good movie plot. Who knows, maybe it is true, but the energy required to do so in the vastness of outer space probably isn’t really available yet. But if a nice sized little nickel iron meteorite made a direct hit on Moscow or DC, you would have to wonder. Talk about sticks and ‘stones’.
Awesome video!!