In Matera, Italy, fragments of a meteorite were found on the balcony of a house. They come from an object that lit up the sky between Apulia and Basilicata in the south of the country on Tuesday, the meteorite and atmospheric research center at the country’s Institute of Astrophysics said on Saturday.
On the evening of February 14, the sky between the regions of Apulia and Basilicata lit up with a ball of fire. It turned out that the celestial body, noticed and photographed in the south of Italy by hundreds of people who left a bright light behind during the flight, was a rock from outer space.
The glowing object was spotted at an altitude of 90 kilometers. It was moving from the vicinity of Bari towards Matera. Scientists immediately appealed to the inhabitants of the area to look for a meteorite that may have fallen to the ground.
The discovery was made on Saturday. Broken rock fragments were found on the balcony of one of the residential houses in the north of Matera. In this house lives an elderly couple who did not hear the noise at the time of the fall. The fragments interested the sons of the inhabitants of the house, it was reported.
According to specialists, a meteorite weighing 0.5 kilogram fell to the ground at a speed of 300 kilometers per hour, breaking up into several dozen fragments. The sons of the older couple found a total of 12 larger pieces and several dozen smaller ones. All of them were handed over to the research center for analysis.
“The discovery was made just three days after the fall of the meteorite, so it is very fresh material, uncontaminated,” astronomer Daniele Gardiol of the research center in Turin told ANSA. He noted that the find from Matera will greatly help scientists reconstruct the stages of planet formation, including the Earth.
Source: PAP, ANSA, media.inaf.it, tvnmeto.pl.
photo-source">Main photo source: Prisma/Inaf
