
Estimated trajectory of today's overhead explosion in Finland
The flight route of the bright fireball that flew over Southern Finland on Wednesday 8th of May has been modelled. Esko Lyytinen, mathematician of URSA astronomical association and member of URSA Finnish Fireball Working Group, estimated that about 5kg of the fireball ended up on the earth's surface, in the southern part of Huittinen. There were over 300 sightings of the fireball reported in the URSA database.
The exact flight route estimation was based on the meteor camera pictures of URSA Finnish Fireball Working Group. Photographers of the fireball route were Johan Linden in Turku and Aki Taavitsainen in Mikkeli.
The cause of the fireball light phenomena was a meteoroid that passed through the atmosphere. Based on the simulation, the mass of the meteoroid was about 50 kilograms, and it's diameter was about 30 centimeters. It arrived in the atmosphere at a 43 degree angle.
The speed of the object was about 23 kilometers per second when it arrived the atmosphere. It ignited into a glowing fireball near Mynämäki at the height of 60 kilometers, from where it travelled into north-east. After crossing Lake Pyhäjärvi, the fireball flamed out northeast of Säkylä, at an altitude of about 23 kilometers.
Comment: Ah, the normalcy bias: "Earth has always been impacted by hundreds of tonnes of small objects from space, so the spectacular fireballs phenomenon everyone the world over has noticed in the past few years has always been so, except that now, people suddenly notice them more..."
Does that sound credible to you?
Note the casual remark at the very end, after giving us 'the dry facts' about fireballs: Say what?!
That is rare! Well, it was rare. It's more normal now! But only because something wicked this way comes...