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Researchers spot space rock that lit up B.C. Interior

‘Like a dream:’ Researchers find space rock that landed in the Kootenays
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A screengrab from a YouTube video taken from a security camera in Bridge Lake, B.C. and posted by Jacquie McKay is shown in a handout. THE CANADIAN PRESS/HO-YouTube-Jacquie McKay

Researchers have pinpointed where in the rugged B.C. Interior a chunk of space rock landed more than two months ago.

A fireball lit up the sky over parts of Western Canada on the night of Sept. 4 and some witnesses reported hearing a loud boom.

Related: Fireball lights up B.C. Interior

The University of Calgary says an asteroid fragment a metre wide and weighing up to five tonnes crashed through the Earth’s atmosphere that night.

Researchers put out a call to the public for videos to help them find where thousands of meteorites ranging from as small as a peppercorn to as large as 10 kilograms landed.

They narrowed it down to a 20-kilometre stretch from just east of Crawford Bay, B.C., to north of the village of Riondel on the shore of Kootenay Lake.

A visiting master’s student from Italy made the first meteorite discovery last month on private property in Crawford Bay.

“At first I couldn’t believe it. Ever since I was a child I got up with my father to see the night sky, and it was like a dream to hold a space rock in my hand,” Fabio Ciceri said in a news release.

The Canadian Press

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