Moss is a carbonaceous chondrite meteorite that fell over the communities of Rygge and Moss in Ostfold county, southeast southern Norway in the morning of midsummer day, July 14, 2006. Read more
Private meteorittjegere har kommet til Norge for å finne og selge biter til internasjonale samlere av meteoritten som falt ned over Østfold 14. juli i år. Direktør Elen Roaldset på Naturhistorisk museum etterlyser et presist lovverk for å stoppe ”meteorittyveriene”.
Private meteorite hunters have come to Norway to find and sell, to international collectors, pieces of the meteorite that fell down over Østfold on July 14th. Director Elen Roaldset of the Natural History Museum (University of Oslo) seeks a new law in order to stop 'meteorite thieves'.
So far, five meteorites have been recovered from the Moss event.
A 35 gram meteorite was recovered at the Martinsens cabin on the 14 July 10:25 ( at the time of the fall) A 750 gram meteorite was recovered from the Johansens house, on the 17th July. A 800 gram meteorite was found by meteorite hunters on the 30th July. A 700 gram meteorite was recovered on the 23rd July. A 676 gram meteorite was recovered on a warehouse roof on the 4th August.
Following the first rains, after the July 14th meteorite fall, a company was hired to find the reason for a leaking roof. 10 cm down in the roof was found a 676 g CO meteorite This stone fits the stone found in Frode Johansens garden (752 g). Today it will be donated to the Geological Museum at the University of Oslo by the company owning the storage building. This is the first impact through a through a roof in Europe since April 1990 in Glanerbrug. (The post above states since 1969).
14. juli ble Østfold truffet av et regn meteoritter, og mange lykkejegere har vært på jakt. Men ingen tenkte på å titte på taket til Norgesgruppens store lager i Moss - før regnet kom.
Nedslaget har ført til en intens jakt på CO-meteorittene, og flere er tidligere funnet i hager og på et tak. En stein på 750 gram kuttet av tre grener på et plommetre, før den boret seg syv centimeter ned i bakken. Det kanskje mest interessante funnet ble imidlertid gjort da taket på lagerbygningen på UNIL på Solgård skog begynte å lekke under en av sommerens heftige regnbyger, og et firma ble leid inn for å tette hullet.
For the first time since 1969 a meteorite has gone through a European roof. The nearly 700 gram meteorite landed on the roof of a warehouse belonging to wholesale group Norgesgruppen in Moss, a town 65 kilometres south of the capital in the Oslo fjord. The object was found last week after a water leak appeared in a warehouse.
"It must have had incredible speed and force, and had made a hole in a steel plate in the roof. People from a firm we hired in to find the reason for the leak found a black stone in the roof construction" - Norgesgruppen press contact Per Roskifte.
Today Astronomer Knut Jørgen Røed Ødegaard from the Astrophysics Institute and Natural History Museum director Elen Roaldset were present to accept the Norgesgruppen meteorite.
"It has been a fantastic meteorite summer. This is a very rare meteorite, a so-called carbon meteorite, and it will get a fine spot amongst our others at the museum" - geologist Elen Roaldset .
"This is an exceptional find! This is the first time since 1969 that a meteorite has gone through a roof anywhere in Europe. The meteorite is a so-called carbon - CO-meteorite. Previously only five falls of CO-meteorites have been observed on Earth, and the last one occurred in Russia in 1937" - Knut Jørgen Røed Ødegaard.
On July 14 a huge fireball flared across the sky in the southeast part of eastern Norway. Witnesses spread across a large area could observe the object while it roared and thundered across from a distance of up to 300 kilometres. The Norgesgruppen meteorite is part of this object that broke up over eastern Norway. Bus driver Ragnar Martinsen was sitting in his cabin outhouse when he heard the noise.
"I thought it was an exercise at Rygge Air Station. The bang and rumbling in the air over the cabin was terrible" - Ragnar Martinsen, on July 16. A small, 35-gram piece of stone hit the ground a few meters away from him, an extremely rare sighting of impact.
Two days later a new and much larger piece of the meteorite was found in a garden near Moss. This 750-gram chunk hit a plum tree, breaking off three branches before burying itself seven centimetres deep in the lawn. The rock was found after the Johansen family returned from their holiday and tried to mow the lawn. These three finds are the only pieces of the July 14th sighting found so far - and Ødegaard urges people in the area to keep looking for more.
The Johansen Family of Moss, south of Oslo, came home from their summer holidays to find a meteorite in their garden. It's another remnant of the meteor that exploded over the Oslo Fjord area on Friday.
"Two branches on our plum tree were broken. I lifted them up and there lay this stone"