Swiss residents report seeing streaking meteor

Numerous people contacted police in the cantons of Zurich, Aargau and Solothurn to report seeing the fireball entering the atmosphere.

Alexander Bangert, 19, told 20 Minuten on Monday that he found four charred pieces of the meteor in his garden at Schöftland in the canton of Aargau.

Bangert told the newspaper that he heard a great “detonation” on Sunday night.

“I went outside and found four black stones on the terrace and on the grass,” said.

Bangert is convinced they came from the meteor.

Witnesses told Le Matin that they saw a “flash, like a lightning bolt” and others reported hearing 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.

The specialist said it was too early to determine where the meteorite may have crashed.

Scientists describe meteors as the passage of meteoroids, small rocky or metallic bodies that are typically fragments from comets or asteroids, travelling through space.

As these objects enter the earth’s atmosphere, aerodynamic heating produces a streak of light.

For this reason meteors are also sometimes called shooting stars.

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: