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(meteorobs) The 7/23/01 Pennsylvania Fireball
Hello all,
I spent much of this afternoon taking a preliminary look at the 150 or so
reports that the American Meteor Society has received on the 7/23/01
Pennsylvania fireball (witnessed from Ontario, New York, New Jersey,
Delaware, Maryland, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and West Virginia).
I have produced, and placed up on the AMS web site, a "push-pin" type map
of the observer locations, the general direction that they saw the fireball
in, and have indicated by color code whether or not sonic booms were heard.
Next to this is an excellent drawing that I was sent of the event from a
witness in southeastern Pennsylvania (I have not yet received any
photographs or video of the event). On the map I have also drawn a VERY
preliminary bounding box for the trajectory of the fireball based upon this
rather cursory review of the data, and helped by the fact that observers in
the Welsboro/Morris Pennsylvania area all report the object as passing
directly overhead and generating very strong sonic booms. The map and
drawing is located at:
http://www.amsmeteors.org/index.html
or
http://www.amsmeteors.org/fireball/fireball_log.html
Additionally, I would kindly request that all fireball reports for events
occurring over the United States please be made to the American Meteor
Society. Our report form is located at:
http://www.amsmeteors.org/fireball/report.html
This will give you the most exposure for a single report made, since I do
the following with it:
(1) For significant events over the USA, I may conduct my own
investigation of the event and make reports about it to the general public
-- the more information I have, the better,
(2) A copy of the report will be quickly forwarded to the International
Meteor Organization, such that you don't have to fill out more than one report.
(3) A copy of the report will be sent to the Canadian Meteorite and
Impacts Advisory Committee (MIAC) for event occurring over Canada or a
bordering U.S. state.
(4) I will notify potentially interested members of the Meteoritical
Society about significant fireballs occurring over their regions, in the
likelihood that they may wish to follow up on the sighting for their own
scientific purposes.
Note that for now, reports made to the IMO FIDAC are *not* generally
forwarded to me, so if you make your report directly to the IMO, I will not
see it. This is something that Andre and I can perhaps arrange for in the
near future.
Best regards,
Jim Richardson
------------------------------------------------------------------------
James Richardson
Department of Planetary Sciences
Lunar and Planetary Laboratory
University of Arizona
Tucson, AZ 85721
LPL email: jrich@lpl.arizonadot edu
LPL office: (520) 621-6960
Home office: (520) 877-2715 or 877-2555
Cell phone: (520) 401-9095
Home page: http://www.lpl.arizonadot edu/~jrich/
Operations Manager
American Meteor Society (AMS)
AMS email: richardson@amsmeteors.org
AMS webpage: http://www.amsmeteors.org/
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