Russians could be forgiven for wondering if they've been unfairly singled out by whatever force rolls the dice on cosmic happenings after another meteor lit up the skies over their country.
A fireball over Murmansk on April 19 took people's memories back to Feb. 15 2013 when a meteor flashed across the skies over the Ural region before exploding in a giant fireball over the city of Chelyabinsk.
That meteor shattered windows across the city, with flying glass injuring around 1,200 residents and the sound of the explosion set off car alarms in the city.
In contrast, no sound was reported from the Murmansk meteor as it exploded in a fireball caught on a number of vehicle dashcam videos, as was the Chelyabinsk meteor.
Those dashcams recorded a bright blue streak plummeting through the skies at about 2:30 a.m. above the city of 300,000 people, then exploding in a bright flash.
Emergency services in Murmansk reported no injuries or damage following the cosmic lightshow.
Falling meteor captured on video should not be that surprising in Russia, where motorists routinely equip the vehicles with dashcams, mostly for evidence of fault in traffic accidents or to record attempted roadside shakedowns by police.
In the Chelyabinsk event, scientists were able to reconstruct the trajectory of the meteor, thought to have been about 60-feet wide, and its probable impact point using such dashcam videos.
Russian astronomer Sergei Smirnov of St. Petersburgh's Pulkovo Astronomical Observatory said the Murmansk event was the result of a "very bright meteor," but added because its path "ended in combustion" with none of it impacting the earth so it could not be categorized as a meteorite, the term for a meteor that actually reaches the earth.
Around 500 meteorites reach the Earth's surface every year, although the majority are small and garner little notice, scientists say.
The Murmansk meteor was visible from the city and over much of Russia's Kola Peninsula, most of which is above the Arctic Circle in the far northwest of the country.
In March, a similar fireball was witnessed in the country's Yakutia region.
The kind of explosion that occurred over Chelyabinsk happens every couple of decades, scientists say, although most occur in remote regions and escape notice.
