Residents of several cantons in Switzerland saw a meteor blazing across the sky on Sunday night, according to ‘The Local.’
The meteor looked like a blue fireball and numerous people contacted the police in the cantons of Zurich, Aargau and Solothurn. The website reported that the blue light falling meteor was also seen in Austria, southern Germany and the Alsace region of France.
A young Swiss told a newspaper today that he found four small pieces of the meteor in his garden at Schöftland in the canton of Aargau. The 19-year-old told ’20 Minuten’ that he heard a great noise on Sunday night and he went outside he “found four black stones on the terrace and on the grass.” Witnesses said that they heard a dull thunder accompanying the meteor as it passed through the sky.
“The information we received clearly indicates that it was a meteorite,” said Markus Griesser from the Eschenberg Observatory in Switzerland. According to NASA, “little chunks of rock and debris in space are called meteoroids. They become meteors — or shooting stars — when they fall through a planet’s atmosphere; leaving a bright trail as they are heated to incandescence by the friction of the atmosphere. Pieces that survive the journey and hit the ground are called meteorites,” says NASA. “Meteoroids become meteors — or shooting stars — when they interact with a planet’s atmosphere and cause a streak of light in the sky. Debris that makes it to the surface of a planet from meteoroids are called meteorites.”
Meteorites passing over Switzerland is not something new. In August 2010, a shooting star was seen above the Saentis mountain, in Schwaegalp. The one seen on Sunday night was captured on video by a resident of the Tyrol region in Austria, who posted the image on YouTube.