(meteorobs) old fireball

[Chris Peterson]

My experience is that nobody who sees a meteor from a car is within 100 
miles of where meteorites might be produced. Unless it was a convertible.

Chris

*******************************
Chris L Peterson
Cloudbait Observatory
http://www.cloudbait.com

On 3/2/2012 9:22 PM, Dave Hostetter wrote:
> I had an interesting conversation about a meteor with a visitor to my
> planetarium yesterday.  As background, there was a tremendous meteor visible
> in the southeastern USA on the evening of March 15, 1957.  I've seen many
> reports from Alabama to Louisiana along with some from surrounding states
> (the local newspaper articles make interesting reading and are probably in
> local libraries along the path).  It was so bright that we regularly get
> questions about it even now, from people who saw it or who remember hearing
> their parents talk about it.  In fact, we get so many questions that when we
> revamped our meteorite and tektite exhibit recently, we included a panel
> about it.  It draws a lot of comment from people who saw the fireball.
>
> The man I talked with thought he had meteorites from the event.  He had been
> a teenager in a school science club at the time, and a local farmer had
> called the science club the next day to report seeing rocks falling all
> around him...did the club want them?  The club members went out and
> collected dozens of them, and my friend still had his after more than 50
> years!  Unfortunately they turned out to be slag, but his description of the
> meteor was good.
>
> This guy is an accomplished local amateur astronomer and life-long science
> lover, and I think he could give me an accurate report.
>
> He described the fireball as much brighter than the moon, lighting the
> ground almost like daylight only bluer.  He and his parents watched the
> event from their car, stopped at a stop sign in town.  He estimated the
> apparent size of the head of the meteor as slightly greater than the width
> of a thumb at arm's length, and watched as the shape changed from nearly
> round to something like a stretched teardrop.  He saw bright "chunks" coming
> off like sparks.  He described both a sizzling sound and a shock wave boom.
> The boom came a couple seconds after the meteor but the sizzling sound was
> simultaneous with it, so seems to have been electrophonic.  I questioned him
> carefully about that, and he was quite sure of it although he had never
> heard of the possibility of electrophonic sounds.
>
> After the meteor, his family drove home, which was essentially around a
> short block.  They got out of the car, and as they went up the steps to
> their porch they felt the ground shake.  He was quite specific that this was
> a seismic event rather than an airborne shock wave because they had already
> heard that and because this shaking was silent.  That's the part that I
> found really interesting, and a detail I had not previously heard.  I drove
> from the intersection where they saw the meteor around the block to his old
> house, and it took about a minute.  Throw in some time to get over their
> surprise after seeing the meteor and time to get out of the car and cross
> their yard, and I figure that seismic event was about 1 to 3 minutes after
> the fireball.  There was a seismic event recorded about 50 miles south that
> may or may not have been related to the fireball (which, based on other
> reports, had to go out over the Gulf of Mexico), but I've got no other
> reports of anyone feeling anything in the distance between.  I have to
> wonder if the ground shake might have been something else.  One to three
> minutes seems like a LONG time under the circumstances.
>
> Anyway, it was an interesting conversation about a long ago event, but I
> thought some of you might like to hear about it.
>
> Dave Hostetter
> New Iberia, LA
>