(meteorobs) North Georgia fireball - 2012 March 8 03:19:10 UT (March 7 22:19:10 EST)

Bill Cooke cookewj at comcast.net
Thu Mar 8 19:16:54 EST 2012


We have just finished refining the trajectory for this event (initial track determined by the automated ASGARD software) which was reported by eyewitnesses through the Internet and by personal email. Captured on 3 out of 4 NASA cameras (unfortunately, the Chickamauga camera, closest to the track, was overcast at the time), I have the following particulars for the fireball:

Start Location: 85.009 W,  34.831 N at an initial altitude of 84.8 km
End location: 85.259 W, 34.804 N at an altitude of 23.2 km
Peak absolute magnitude: -11.8
Initial meteor speed: 18.6 +/- 1.3 km/s
Final meteor speed: ~4 km/s (determined through deceleration)

This fireball meets two of the criteria for producing meteorites - 1) Penetration below 40 km altitude, and 2) deceleration to under 10 km/s. We are working on determining the mass of the meteor, from both the light curve and the deceleration profile. These should be available sometime tomorrow; if the results are favorable, we will initiate dark flight calculations and compute a potential fall zone.

Map of the meteor trajectories (initial and refined) along with camera and sighting locations can be found at http://www.billcooke.org/events/NGA_2012Mar08/GeorgiaTracksOverview.jpg
The legend for this map is as follows:

  Yellow diamonds = NASA All Sky Fireball Network stations
  Circles = observations reported to the AMS (pink), Dirk Ross (red), or Bill Cooke (orange)
  Yellow line = automatic meteor trajectory solution. Direction of travel is roughly E to W.
  Orange line = manual (refined) meteor trajectory solution. Direction of travel is roughly E to W.

Close up map of the trajectory: http://www.billcooke.org/events/NGA_2012Mar08/GeorgiaTracks.jpg
Composite images of the event as seen from MSFC and Cartersville: http://www.billcooke.org/events/NGA_2012Mar08/ev_20120308_031911A_01A.png and http://www.billcooke.org/events/NGA_2012Mar08/ev_20120308_031910A_04A.png
Movie of event as seen from Cartersville: http://www.billcooke.org/events/NGA_2012Mar08/ev_20120308_031910A_04A.wmv
Meteor light curve: http://www.billcooke.org/events/NGA_2012Mar08/abs_mag.png



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