Light phenomena were observed in Finland on the Kola Peninsula, in the night skies over Murmansk.
Multiple drivers with dashcams out on the streets of the 300,000-person city at 2:10 am on Saturday noticed a bright blue trail speed across the night sky, and then explode while still in the air.
Most observers in Murmansk identified the object as a meteorite, though officials have neither confirmed it nor said where the fragments are likely to have landed. Others speculated that the object may have been space debris, re-entering the atmosphere.
While tens of tons of cosmic dust reaches the Earth’s atmosphere each day, the number of meteorites that reach the surface may be about 500 a year, though most are small, and scientists do not have a precise calculation.
The most spectacular meteorite of recent years was over the Urals city of Chelyabinsk last year, when an astral body exploded in the sky with the strength of 40 Hiroshima bombs, temporarily blinding and deafening hundreds of people below.
Ursa’s Esko Lyytinen said the fireball was visible in Mikkeli and Posio at somewhere around 1:15 am.
