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Re: (meteorobs) Tunguska bolide Nininger and his method

Hello List,

Harvey Nininger used  simple, and effective method to track down fireballs.  He went to the vicinity of the fireball reports and asked farmers where they saw the fireball go.. They would say that they saw it land WEST of them in the next field or just over the mountain, etc. He would proceed to interview folks along that line until he met a witness who said that the meteorite had landed EAST of them in a field he had already passed.  At this point he would start the actually hunting on the ground.  

This works but takes a while to proceed. He was following a fireball seen Feburary 18,1948.  After a blizzard forced Nininger to call off searching, he asked the farmer to be on the lookout  for the meteorite in the spring.  The following spring he did just that when he drove his tractor into a 10 ft deep crater.  The farmer called Nininger to report what he had found and Nininger hurried to the site.  

The Norton County Fall was a one ton aubrite achrondrite on the Kansas and  Nebraska stateline--the largest stony meteorite to fall in the US!  While Nininger was standing atop of the meteorite taking mesurements,  a rival university professor-- Lincoln LaPaz and cohorts arrived and claimed it was theirs. LaPaz had  predicted a strewn field based upon Civil Air Patrol reports.  LaPaz detested hunting meteorites for other than museum collections.  Having the backing of the University of  Nebraska,  LaPaz was able to buy the meteorite almost literally out from under the feet of Nininger.  LaPaz and his cohort Leonard never shared their find in any capacity with Nininger.

To my knowledge, Dr. Nininger never attempted to establish orbits other then the final few seconds of the meteoroid's journey to the ground.

Regards,
Elton Jones

KevTK@aol.com wrote:
> 
> In a message dated 6/27/99 10:38:11 PM Eastern Daylight Time,
> MeteorObs@charlestondot net writes:
> 
> > Do you, or anyone for that matter, know if Harvey Nininger was able to
> >  calculate such orbits. I thought I had read somewhere at some time, that he
> >  was, but I may be mistaken. In any event, he was successful in recovering
> >  them.
> 
> I took a quick look through my H.H. Ninninger text books and saw no example
> of him figuring out the orbits of his future meteorites. What he did though
> was to figure out the directional travel of the fireball through interviews
> of the local farmers. This was how he determined on where the fall actually
> was.
> BTW, at the time he discovered 2/3s of all the meteorites in the U.S.
> 
> Kevin K
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