Great Western Fireball…
JCrowell sent me the link. Check out the security cam videos as well. Quite something. I’d thought it would be a larger Leonid (the current meteor shower) but NASA thinks otherwise. http://www.spaceweather.com/
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Several friends on the Meteorite listserv are keeping tabs on this, and at least 2 or 3 are packing bags (again!) to go out and search if it looks likely something has actually dropped. Right now, however, the thinking is that it was a particularly robust Leonid. Still, we could be pleasantly surprised.
I am giving a talk today about such things (Rocks from Space), and have brought along a few inexpensive meteorites to give away. Maybe someone will discover a new love of science!
Hi Chondrite, I know of a few hunters with bags packed and tanks gassed up ready to roll! Me being one of them.
I’m a little amused by the term “the thinking is that it was a particularly robust Leonid” and find it rather odd that someone with knowledge of meteorites would associate such a large fireball with the Leonids meteor shower. Not to mention the implication that this is some sort of consensus in the meteorite world.
I know of a lot of media hype, bad reporting and poor research that tries to link the two, but those two events are completely separate and it’s only coincidental that the fireball happened during the Leonid shower.
Good going on the freebie!
Regards,
MUSA
I more properly should have said I can’t speak for anything except what I’ve seen on the listserv; several reports came in about the Great NW Bolide happening at the same time as the Leonids, and hope that something dropped, but little else. If this was a case of synchronicity and it was not a Leonid but a separate meteorite fall, AFAIK, no one has recovered anything, and I don’t know if anyone is up there hunting. No field reports have come in yet. If someone finds a strewnfield, or even just a chunk or two, that would be great. If you’re going, best of luck!
Ummm,I was doing a profile update and your program said:”
WordPress 2.8.6 is available! Please inform the site ad-
mistrater”.
My best friend is hunting a meteorite to give to her nephew for Christmas so I’ve been haunting eBay for her
and learning that there are a k’jillion different types
and I don’t know any of them. “The blind leading the…
Azure, if your friend is ok with an unclassified meteorite, I’ll send along one of the ones I have for giveaway. Otherwise, one of the NWA meteorites are generally inexpensive but still a rock from space. Another one they might like are either Sikhote-Alin or Canyon Diablo. The first is a major meteorite fall from Russia, the other is part of the fall that made Meteor Crater in AZ. Both are readily available iron meteorites and shouldn’t be too expensive.
You can contact me at colemanpurple at hotmail dot com.
They say there were witness to the fireball here in Vegas, unfortunately I was asleep and cannot verify that fact.
Thanks a lot Chondrite!! She’s a bush teacher in Alaska
and will be gone for a few days on Medical leave,but when
she gets back I will let her know and get in touch with you. We really do need help.
Hmm. Any chance it was a cousin of the one that hit Indonesia, I wonder?
The Ramans do everything in threes…
Hey, I’ve got a question for you meteorite hounds. I’ve got a piece of jewelry that contains a nickle-iron slice from a meterorite. I was warned by someone that some are radioactive and it’s dangerous to wear. How likely so?
Most meteorites are less radioactive than common Earth rocks; a nickle-iron slice is about as radioactive as a lug nut. My concern would be having it rust, rather than any residual space radiation, and if it was properly prepared, that probably isn’t a concern.
I am sure you must know someone with a Geiger counter? Wouldn’t that put it to rest?
I once saw a show about this guy in the southwest that has
this amazing collection of meteorites. When they showed the etched ones I sucked air! The crystalline structure is
so beautiful!! I recently heard that he is selling off the
collection and retiring. On eBay many offerings are call-
ing tektites meteorites,I DO know the difference there. I
seem to remember that “chondrite” is a type of meteorite,
true?
‘Chondrites’ are actually a feature of some meteorites. They are the primitive grains made when the solar system initially formed, and eventually coalesced into many of the rocky bodies. You can still see them in some stony meteorites.
Update: According to what is now being posted, any meteorites likely fell on the Dugway Proving Ground in Utah, and meteorite hunters are not allowed to trespass there, as it is military property. My trajectory apparently was way off; I thought at first it was up around Idaho
That’s interesting. Dugway is about 35 miles south and west of my high school. Interesting that the rock from space would fall on a military installation.
Hello CJ – haven’t seen any updates on the book progress recently and was just wondering how that was coming? Also interested in the e-book store and any progress on that front. Obviously this post has nothing to do with the space stuff but this is my first post to this site and I didn’t see any better place to put it. Please let me know if I should have put it somewhere else. Thanks.
Time for an update: I’m going to do today’s post on that topic. And welcome in!
As high up as it was and as big an explosion as it seems,
wouldn’t the shrapnel be pretty far flung,like a few
hundred miles? As for it being over a military base,it
isn’t like the military to admit that something went a
bit wrong with a test of some kind,so a mystery could be
the end result. They said on a news station that it was
the size of a stove according to current speculations.
Even when a meteorite breaks apart on the way down, all the pieces tend to keep going in the same direction. Gravity and inertia make it like running the pieces through a sieve; the smallest ones fall out first, then larger and larger, until the biggest ones hit the ground last. This makes a generally elliptical fallout pattern called a strewnfield, which can be several miles along both axes with smaller bits at one end and the biggest chunks at the other.
There was one unverified report that someone out hunting for arrowheads may have picked up a piece of the Utah fall outside the military reservation, but so far it’s unsubstantiated.
I apologize for monopolizing this discussion, it’s just wind me up and let me go :blush:
Well,don’t blush for my sake,I find it fascinating and it
beats the theory that somebody up there is throwing rocks
at us!
http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news165.html
The one that hit Indonesia in October was about 10 meters or 33 feet across. This one was probably a bit smaller. I have not a clue, but I would imagine that how much of it reaches the ground depends on a)density and composition and b)the angle of approach. There is data on one that sort of stitched through our atmosphere and kept going, as I recall. Some, like the Indonesian one, go bang before they actually hit the ground.
I had a lovely program back when I was working on Heavy Time that allowed me to plot the behavior of real asteroids over time. They requested that if anybody developed data that showed a possible impact with anything, they report it—the program has some quirks in it, and results kind of depend on what area and time frame you’re looking at. Well, I developed data showing Ceres getting smacked by something substantial in the next century—but to my intense frustration, I could never duplicate the result to get the actual numbers to send in. Ceres http://www.astrobio.net/pressrelease/1711/snowball-ceres is about 580 miles across, is rated as a planet-let, and may be a major part ice. If it does get smacked, it should produce a show, for sure.
And, Chondrite, your information is fascinating.
I’m really enjoying your info, Chondrite. I *think* back in the early to mid seventies when we were living near the coast I’m pretty sure we saw a meteor fall into the ocean late one night. As I recall the first thought was that a plane had crashed…..it was fast and loud….this was over thirty years ago and I have not thought of it until now…hmmmmm What strange things float up from our memories…..;)