To quote:

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.


This article includes a photograph of the meteor as it came streaking in:

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


Norwegian version contains a seismograph recording of the impact:

http://www.aftenposten.no/viten/article1345940.ece

very very interesting. The article says it hit a mountain, i have to wonder if it a was an airburst...

Record meteor aside, the most amazing part for me was the daytime photograph taken at 2AM!

Plenty of daylight at that time - check the World Daylight Google Map mashup. Since it's above the arctic circle it's probably been constant daylight up there for more than a fortnight already.

Yes we got 'daylight' around the clock now, this close to summer solistice.

The newspaper refers to the picture as "night sky," despite the fact that the sun is up. I once visted Narvik in early July to see the midnight sun, arriving on the train at 3 AM. It was what I would call "daytime," but everyone was asleep. I wonder if their definition of night requires darkness.

Michaelc

Looks like North America got its own fireball:

http://www.duluthsuperior.com/mld/duluthsu...thsuperior_news

http://winnipegsun.com/News/Manitoba/2006/...618758-sun.html


They may be coming from this meteor shower:

http://spaceweather.com/meteors/arietids/arietids.htm

There was a big one over Seattle not long ago too. Any news from the Norway meteorite impact?

Saturday 3rd June - large fireball seen above Bristol UK heading west about 21:30 dusk.

In the pub garden (Beer!) - thought I saw the spacestation overhead, but wrong direction (heading west) and too fast.
Initially white with a tail-streak then tiny redenning ball.

Heading West so could be an Arietid as that is East (But does not rise until 4am!! so maybe not.).

There seems to be a lot of big chunks(relatively) in this comet cloud.

Nick

The Arietid meteor shower is said to come from the planetoid Icarus,
which gets closer to the Sun than Mercury and then moves out beyond
Mars' orbit in its continuous celestial journey.

I wonder if all that heating and cooling is causing the space rock to
crack and break apart, spreading pieces of itself into the Sol system?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Icarus_%28asteroid%29

http://members.fortunecity.com/wallpapers2...x768/Icarus.jpg

http://www.ninfinger.org/~sven/models/html_pix/rbicarus.html

I also recall a plan in the 1960s to put instruments inside Icarus that would
study the Sun as it approached perihelion, with everything but what had to
be on the planetoid's surface protected by its rocky hide. Still sounds
plausible to me.

That's a clever idea. I have been reading some aritlces in the book Asteroids, and was surprised to learn that many, if not most, astroids are big rubble piles, not solid bodies of rock. So it woldn't be surprising if Icarus loses some material near the Sun.

Just found this article titled "Here's where the meteorite hit":

http://www.aftenposten.no/english/local/article1348689.ece

Thanks for the update.

I have read some "histories" of attempts to recover recently fallen rocks from space,
but this is the from the beginning!

Jack