A blazing fireball has lit up the dark skies of Arctic Finland for five seconds, giving off what scientists say was "the glow of 100 full moons" and igniting hurried attempts to find the reported meteorite.
Finnish experts were scrambling to calculate its trajectory and find where it landed, according to Tomas Kohout of the University of Helsinki's physics department, who said Thursday night's fireball "seems to have been one of the brightest ones".
It produced a blast wave that felt like an explosion about 6.40pm and could also be seen in northern Norway and in Russia's Kola peninsula, he told The Associated Press on Saturday.
It might have weighed about 100 kilograms, according to Nikolai Kruglikov of Yekaterinburg's Urals Federal University."We believe it didn't disintegrate but reached a remote corner of Finland," Kohout said, adding that any search plans for the meteorite must face the fact that "right now we don't have much daylight" - four hours, to be precise.
The meteorite produced a blast wave that felt like an explosion. Source: Johannes Karhula
The Norwegian meteorite network said the fireball "had the glow of 100 full moons" and likely was going northeast, perhaps "to the Norwegian peninsula of Varanger," north of where the borders of Russia, Finland and Norway meet.
Kohout said scientists looked forward to any space debris they can get their hands on.
Viktor Troshenkov of the Russian Academy of Sciences told the Tass news agency that the fireball could be part of a prolific meteor shower known as the Leonids, which peaks at this time of year. He said he felt Thursday's fireball likely wasn't the sole meteorite but others maybe were not seen due to thick clouds elsewhere.