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(meteorobs) Calif Fireball info
I thought you all would be interested in this. A friend sent it to me this
morning.
George Zay
------
<< Hi George....
you may recall a couple weeks back I mentioned a wire story about a
bright green flash viewed from much of California.... well, the AP
tonight ran an update on that flash, and thought you might be
interested:
PM-CA-Green Flash, Bjt,640 Scientist: Meteor Entered Atmosphere, Orbited
and Hit Calif. on its Return jearj1rj2 By JANE E. ALLEN AP Science
Writer<
LOS ANGELES (AP) Breaking up is hard to do, especially if you9re a
meteorite.<
Two scientists believe the mysterious flash of green light seen over a
large portion of the West recently came from two separate death throes
of a space rock.<
The chunk burned through the atmosphere, creating a glow seen over Texas
and New Mexico, then orbited Earth for more than 1 hours before
streaking to a blazing doom northeast of Los Angeles, say John Wasson, a
meteorite specialist at the University of California, Los Angeles, and
Mark Boslough, a physicist from Sandia National Laboratories in
Albuquerque.<
3It9s two events, the same object,2 Wasson said.<
Scientists have never seen a meteorite being captured and then
re-entering the atmosphere and would like to get their hands on it, the
researchers said.<
UCLA is offering a $5,000 reward for the first chunk weighing at least 4
ounces, with smaller rewards for smaller samples. Wasson said small
pieces could have landed anywhere that the light flash was observed in
grass, on roofs or in gutters. The fragments would look like small,
matte black stones.<
Based on electronic mail messages from lay observers, Wasson and
Boslough have come up with the following scenario for the meteorite9s
plunge:<
The object first entered Earth9s atmosphere at about 8 p.m. MDT on Oct.
3 east of Las Cruces, N.M. It was heading east-northeast and slowed down
as it descended at a shallow angle toward the Texas Panhandle.<
It came the closest to Earth9s surface near Artesia, N.M., where it
began breaking apart, spawning a shower of meteors that created a
brilliant sky show extending at least as far as Lubbock, Texas.<
The biggest fragment then hurtled back into space. Eventually it slowed
to 18,450 mph too slow to escape Earth9s gravitational field. The
chunk briefly became a small moon, making a single, 100-minute orbit of
the Earth.<
It re-entered the atmosphere above the Pacific Ocean and passed over the
California coast near Point Conception. The mass, glowing with heat from
the re-entry, continued its journey just north of Bakersfield.<
Wasson said one of the most detailed accounts of the meteorite9s passing
came from Adam Graff of La Canada Flintridge, a seventh grader camping
in the Sierra Nevada near the Kern River drainage area. He described
hearing sonic booms and seeing the flash of light.<
According to Wasson, the largest mass stopped glowing northeast of
Kernville in the Sierra Nevada, where sonic booms were widely heard.
Glowing embers that observers saw descending could have traveled as far
east as the Owens Valley around Coso Junction, he said.<
Because the meteorite left a glowing path through so much atmosphere,
scientists should be able to reconstruct its trajectory and even the
orbit it made around the sun before heading to Earth, Wasson said.<
Boslough and Wasson continue to encourage observations from eastern New
Mexico and the Texas panhandle.<
Wasson said the meteorite was similar to the so-called 3Peekskill
fireball2 captured on videotape on Oct. 9, 1992, before it crashed into
a 1980 Chevy Malibu automobile in Peekskill, N.Y. Another fireball
observed on Aug. 10, 1972 above North America was filmed by a tourist in
Grand Teton National Park. It was placed into a new orbit that
scientists believe will bring it near to the Earth again on Aug. 11,
1997, the scientists said.<
<
Eds: Wasson says recovered meteorite samples can be sent to him at the
Institute of Geophysics at UCLA, Los Angeles, CA 90025. He can be
reached via electronic mail at wassonigpp.ucladot edu and Boslough can be
contacted at mbboslosandiadot gov.<
AP-WS-10-14-96 2349EDT
>>