Baltic Sea Splash by the Bjurböle Meteorite of 1899

The Deep Impact auction this week had an incredible collection of space rocks. When I saw this historical stone that landed in the Baltic Sea near my homeland, I was intrigued! The fireball was seen all around Baltic Sea and approached Helsinki form the South, so it screamed over Estonia on final approach!

Here is Christie’s curated summation:
On the evening of March 12, 1899, a bright fireball was observed over the Baltic Sea off the coast of what was at the time the Russian Grand Duchy of Finland. The event was reported in Helsinki’s major newspaper Päivälehti:

“A large and bright meteor flew over our city from the northwest to the southeast at 9.30 pm. The meteor lit up the area like a giant light bulb. The clouds had golden undertones. After about a minute, the meteor broke into many small pieces by making a thunderous noise. The sound lasted for several minutes. The blast shook houses to their foundations. People went out of their homes and invaded the streets and gardens. Some thought that the artillery had fired in the Fortress of Viabord while others thought it was the end of the world. Reportedly, the same phenomenon was followed in the eastern and western part of the city. To have a better understanding of this phenomenon, we invite the public to send comments to the meteorological observatory. It is important to know when and for how long the phenomenon was seen, how much time elapsed between the appearance of the fireball and the explosion, and also the duration of the explosion and in which direction the phenomenon moved. Ideally, the indicator should indicate on a drawing, the direction of the meteor compared with the position of the witness.”

As a result of Finnish citizenry’s efforts, the trajectory of the fireball was triangulated and its impact point was determined to be in the Baltic Sea just off the coast. The impact created a three-meter hole in the Baltic Sea ice about 50 kilometers from Helsinki, then fell to the bottom and was covered with mud.

Because the ice hole showed the exact point were the meteorite had hit, they built a waterproof wooden well out of wooden beams. This wooden well was dropped through the hole in the ice to the bottom of the mud layer. Then the well was pumped to empty out the water and mud. This did not succeed completely, but in the end a diver was able to find the meteorite and pulled the pieces up to the ice.

Bjurböle is an extremely distinctive meteorite. It is unusually friable and its fine-grained creamy matrix is packed with chondrules (spherical silicate-rich droplets that aggregated along with dust, metal and sulfide to form the planets and asteroids). Various chondrule types are in evidence. This sample features a well-affixed, slightly yellowed, catalog stamp of the Finnish Geological Museum in which the “0.350” written is a reference to this sample’s estimated weight. This is a fine example of a historic meteorite — and one of the very few meteorites recovered after falling into a body of water.

The main mass is on display at the Finnish Museum of Natural History, from where this specimen was obtained in an exchange. L/LL4 transitional chondrite from Uusimaa, Finland (60°23’59” N, 25°47’59” E). 73 x 75 x 58mm and 340g.