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(meteorobs) Prospector says he's found Leonid meteorite

 Prospector says he's found Leonid meteorite
Source: Nine News [Australia]
Date: November 20 1998
Header: Prospector says he's found Leonid meteorite

A prospector in country Victoria claims he has found a 7.5 kg
meteorite still glowing after plummeting to earth in the Leonid
meteor shower early on Wednesday morning.

The man, who wants to remain anonymous, reported his find to the
National Space and Meteor Hotline that afternoon and wants it
independently assessed.

Ross Dowe, who runs the National UFO Hotline, spoke Friday of the
prospector's experience.

"He said he was at a dam watching the Leonids and doing some yabbying
when all of a sudden there was a short burst, an eruption and a flash
and something whooshed past," said Dowe.

"Then there was a huge slam-bam,"

The prospector waited for dawn and then went searching for the
object, which he found still glowing in the scrub.

"There is a lot of interest in the Leonids at the moment and as such
it could be worth a lot of money to this guy," Dowe said.

"Some people are saying that with the right buyer it could
potentially make him tens of millions of dollars."

The man, a prospector for some 10 years, says the oval-shaped 7.5 kg
object appeared to be a jet-black iron-like composite with blue
flecks through it.

He has asked the hotline to act as agents for its sale.

Since the find was reported, Dowe said he had heard of a smaller
meteorite, also possibly from the Leonids, which landed in
Wollongong, New South Wales, and may soon be put up for auction in
Sydney.

An astronomer from the Mt Stromlo Observatory in Canberra said it was
not inconceivable that the man had found a meteorite from the Leonid
shower.

"It is tough to say without an expert looking at it," said Brian
Schmidt, research fellow at Mt Stromlo, which is part of the
Australian National University.

"A few things were big enough (in the Leonid shower) to hit the
ground."

But it was just as likely to be a common meteorite -- they fall to
earth on a daily basis -- as a fragment from the long tail of the
Comet Tempel-Tuttle.

Though the science on the composition of comets was incomplete, a
fragment of the comet's tail was more likely to be rocky than made of
iron, he said.

It was also highly unlikely that it would still be glowing when the
man found it.

"The rock would cool in a matter of minutes. He would have to have
found it within a very short time of it coming down for it to still
be hot," he said.

A Leonid fragment may not make the man a multi-millionaire, but it
would certainly be a handy Christmas bonus.

"It is most definitely an auctionable object. Something from the
Leonid shower would sell at Sotheby's for tens or hundreds of
thousands of dollars," Schmidt said.

The Leonid shower is so-named because the meteors appear to come from
the direction of the constellation Leo. -- AAP

http://www.eisadot net.au/~ippoz/17nov1998.html


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