COPENHAGEN — A blazing fireball lit up the dark skies of Arctic Finland for five seconds, giving off what scientists said was “the glow of 100 full moons” and igniting hurried attempts to find the reported meteorite. It might have weighed about 100 kilograms (220 pounds), according to Nikolai Kruglikov of Yekaterinburg’s Urals Federal University. Amateur astronomers in the Arctic then saw about 1,000 meteors, 40 meteorites and one fireball in just one night. A meteoroid is smaller than a kilometre (0.62 mile), and often so small that when it enters the Earth’s atmosphere it vaporizes and never reaches the ground. A meteor is a flash of light caused by a meteoroid that fails to get through the Earth’s atmosphere.

Source: National Post November 18, 2017 10:53 UTC