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(meteorobs) Excerpts from "CCNet 123/2001 - 22 November 2001"
------- Forwarded Message
From: Peiser Benny <B.J.Peiser@livjm.acdot uk>
To: cambridge-conference <cambridge-conference@livjm.acdot uk>
Subject: CCNet 123/2001 - 22 November 2001
Date: Thu, 22 Nov 2001 10:31:08 -0000
CCNet 123/2001 - 22 November 2001
=================================
"The chances these pieces are from the Leonid meteor shower are
essentially zero," said Adler Planetarium astronomer Mark Hammergren
Tuesday... Several factors make it unlikely that the rocks the Yurans
found are meteorites, said Hammergren. "Meteors that come from comets are
composed of very fragile dust," he said and the rocks found by the Yurans
are far too large to have come from a comet. "Further," he said, "no
meteorites have ever been recovered from a meteor shower, ever, and no
meteorites have ever been tied to comets as their point of origin."
--Chicago Tribune, 21 November 2001
(1) ANOTHER FALSE ALARM? SPECTATORS NEARLY HIT BY METEOR SHOWER
The Associated Press, 20 November 2001
(2) SPACE ROCKS SLAM INTO INDIANA
Chicago Sun Times, 21 November 2001
(3) METEORITE CLAIM CALLED ROCKY: EXPERTS DISPUTE FIND IN INDIANA
Chicago Tribune, 21 November 2001
[...]
(7) NASA PROBE TO BLAST INTO COMET
Discovery News, 20 November 2001
[...]
(9) METEORITE CLAIM FROM LEONIDS?
Phil Plait <badastro@badastronomy.com>
[...]
==================
(1) ANOTHER FALSE ALARM? SPECTATORS NEARLY HIT BY METEOR SHOWER
>From The Associated Press, 20 November 2001
http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/nationworld/sns-meteor.story?coll=sns%2D
newsnation%2Dheadlines
HIGHLAND, Ind. -- Laura Yuran and her son Jonathon got a closer look at the
Leonid meteor shower than they bargained for. Yuran and her 11-year-old son
believe they were nearly hit by chunks of the space rocks early Sunday
morning.
The two were watching the meteor shower outside their northwestern Indiana
home about 4 a.m. when hail-like objects began pelting them, The Times of
Munster reported today.
As Laura walked toward the house to get her husband, Tom, a chunk of rock
slammed to the ground near where she had been standing just moments before.
"It went, 'Boom!' and I screamed," Laura said. "Part of it hit the driveway
and the second part was embedded in the ground. I was afraid to touch it."
Tom Yuran recovered two rocks, one of which he had to pull out of the
ground, the newspaper said. The rocks, which are rust-colored on one side
and silvery on the other, weigh a total of about two ounces.
Jim Seevers, an astronomer from Chicago's Adler Planetarium, said the rocks
are likely meteorites from the Leonids. The rust color is "the fusion
crust," he said, which results when the rock is seared by the earth's
atmosphere.
"The rock probably chipped off and the shiny silver they see is the inside,"
Seevers told The Times. "It's most likely iron and nickel."
The Yurans contacted Chicago's Field Museum of Natural History, whose
curator, Dr. Menache Wadhwa, asked them to bring one of the rocks for
geologists to examine.
"She said we're the only ones anywhere who have reported falling meteorites
from the Leonid meteor shower," Tom said.
After the scientists are done examining the possible meteorites, Laura said
she hopes to put them in a display case and give it to her son for his rock
collection.
Copyright 2001 Associated Press
==============
(2) SPACE ROCKS SLAM INTO INDIANA
>From Chicago Sun Times, 21 November 2001
http://www.suntimes.com/output/news/cst-nws-meteor21.html
BY ART GOLAB, STAFF REPORTER
Watching the Leonid meteor shower early Sunday, Laura and Tom Yuran got a
big surprise: Chunks of space rocks nearly hit them.
"Go get your dad--it's hitting us!" Laura Yuran shouted to her 11-year-old
son, Jonathan, as she ran for cover. Then a small chunk of rock slammed into
the driveway near where she'd been standing.
''It went, 'Boom!' and I screamed,'' the Highland, Ind., woman said. ''Part
of it hit the driveway, and the second part was embedded in the ground. I
was afraid to touch it.''
Tom Yuran found his wife and son huddled under an awning on the steps of the
back porch. He gingerly approached the larger of the two objects.
"I touched it with my finger, thinking it was going to be hot," he said. "It
was actually cold."
One piece seemed to have broken off from the other. Both pieces were a rusty
brownish-orange on the outside, and silvery on the inside, where they had
apparently split.
The Yurans have an appointment today with Meenakshi Wadhwa, a Field Museum
expert who will examine one of the objects. Wadhwa, curator of meteorites in
the museum's geology department, said the rust color could be the "fusion
crust," which results when the atmosphere sears the rock.
But she added that if it is a meteorite, it's unlikely to be associated with
the Leonid shower, which occurs once a year when the earth passes through
the orbit of the comet Tempel-Tuttle. Despite the term "meteor shower,"
Wadhwa said no actual meteorites have ever been found in conjunction with a
shower caused by a comet.
"It could, however, be a coincidental meteor fall," she said. "Meteors fall
everywhere at random. . . . Every day, 50 tons of meteor fragments hit the
earth, though most never make it to the surface."
But some do. And collectors pay up to $25 a gram for meteorites, but the
Yuran family doesn't plan on selling theirs. "I don't know if it has any
monetary value," said Tom Yuran, 51. "But, for me, it definitely has a lot
of sentimental value."
Copyright 2001, Chicago Sun Times
=============
(3) METEORITE CLAIM CALLED ROCKY: EXPERTS DISPUTE FIND IN INDIANA
>From Chicago Tribune, 21 November 2001
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/printedition/chi-0111210078nov21.story?co
ll=chi%2Dprintmetro%2Dhed
By William Mullen
Tribune staff reporter
Two rocks that Highland, Ind., family members said fell into their yard
early Sunday as they watched the spectacular Leonid meteor shower will be
examined by meteorite experts Wednesday at the Field Museum.
Tom and Laura Yuran are convinced the rocks are meteorites that rained down
on their yard from outer space during the meteor shower. Chicago area
astronomers and geologists, however, are not convinced, at all.
Laura Yuran said the larger of the two rocks, measuring about 2 by 1 1/2
inches, slammed into a sidewalk about 4:30 a.m. Sunday. Later they found
another, similar rock, with a crusty, rust-colored exterior and shiny
metallic interior, measuring about 1 3/4 by 1 inches, in their lawn.
"The chances these pieces are from the Leonid meteor shower are essentially
zero," said Adler Planetarium astronomer Mark Hammergren Tuesday.
The Leonid meteor shower is a predictable phenomenon in which the Earth
plows through trails of tiny debris left behind by the comet Tempel-Tuttle,
which passes near the Earth every 33 years.
The debris, usually no larger than a grain of sand, burns intensely when it
strikes the atmosphere 60 to 70 miles above Earth, streaking visibly across
the night sky as shooting stars.
Meteorites are meteors so big that they do not burn up entirely in the
atmosphere and fall to earth.
Laura Yuran said her son, Jonathon, 11, woke her up at 4 a.m. Sunday to go
outside with him to watch the well-publicized meteor shower.
"The sky looked like a beautiful light show festival," she said, "with
beautiful streaks of light. It sounded like little pebbles were hitting the
ground all around us, like a hail storm.
"I started walking to the house to get my husband to come out and look when
this thing fell like, Boom! It hit the sidewalk right by where I had just
been standing. I screamed and my husband came running with a flashlight."
The family soon found the two pieces of rock.
"They are silver and gold and a rusted color," said Laura Yuran, a school
maintenance worker, "that shine real prettylike, turned in a certain way,
like little diamonds."
Several factors make it unlikely that the rocks the Yurans found are
meteorites, said Hammergren.
"Meteors that come from comets are composed of very fragile dust," he said
and the rocks found by the Yurans are far too large to have come from a
comet.
"Further," he said, "no meteorites have ever been recovered from a meteor
shower, ever, and no meteorites have ever been tied to comets as their point
of origin."
Most meteorites are pieces of asteroids crashing through the Earth's
atmosphere, he said. A very rare few are pieces of rock that exploded off
the surface of Mars or the moon from the impact of striking asteroids,
sending them flying to Earth.
Meenakshi Wadhwa, a Field Museum geologist who has recovered Mars meteorites
from expeditions to snowfields in Antarctica, said she will examine the
Yurans' rocks when they bring them to her laboratory at the museum
Wednesday.
"It seems improbable that they could be meteorites," she said, "but it is
impossible to say until I can see them.
"Certainly it seems impossible that they could be associated with the Leonid
meteors. The chance that they are meteorites that fell coincidentally from
another source during the meteor shower seems very unlikely too."
As word of the falling rocks spread Tuesday, the Yurans said they were
inundated by requests for media interviews, including scheduled appearances
Wednesday via remote hookups with three national morning television news
shows.
"Some people have asked if we were being hoaxed by some jokers throwing
rocks into our yard," said Laura Yuran, "but that couldn't be. We got up on
the spur of the moment, so nobody could have known we were going to be
there.
"My God, if one of those things had hit one of us in the head, we wouldn't
be here now."
Copyright ) 2001, Chicago Tribune
=============
(7) NASA PROBE TO BLAST INTO COMET
>From Discovery News, 20 November 2001
http://dsc.discovery.com/news/briefs/20011119/asteroid.html
By Irene Brown, Discovery News
Nov. 20 - Robotic probes have flown by asteroids and comets, collected
samples for return to Earth and even landed on one of the small primordial
worlds, but a new mission under development by NASA takes solar system
exploration a step farther: into a comet's heart.
Called Deep Impact, the spacecraft is designed to slam into the surface of
comet Tempel 1, creating a crater larger than a football field and deeper
than a seven-story building. Its primary scientific theme is to understand
the differences between the interior of a comet's nucleus and its surface.
Comets are interesting to scientists because they contain material, often
ice and dust, from the original formation of the solar system. As comets
near the sun, the ice melts and releases dust particles: the comet's tail.
Many comets far from the sun are hard to tell apart from asteroids, which
are made of rock, and there's currently no way to properly identify the
imposters.
The information is important for several reasons, including the practical
though improbable scenario that at some time in the future, we will need to
deflect a comet or asteroid on a collision course with Earth. Knowing what's
inside the threatening comet or asteroid will be crucial to developing
technologies to alter its path.
The idea to probe beneath a comet's icy surface dates back more than 20
years. Data from a European probe dispatched to Halley's Comet revealed a
mysterious black core, which puzzled researchers.
"We became increasingly curious as to just how this black layer
accumulated," said Alan Delamere, who is overseeing development of Deep
Impact's instruments and systems for Ball Aerospace and Technologies Corp.,
which is building the spacecraft for NASA. "We suspect that as the comet's
ice dissipates, dust is left, which becomes a loose, outer crust insulating
the trapped, inner comet."
The probe is scheduled for launch in January 2004 and hit the comet on July
4, 2005. With a variety of science instruments and imagers, the spacecraft
will study how the crater is formed and what lies beneath its outer surface.
"The mission is completely different, " said astronomer Michael A'Hearn,
with the University of Maryland. "It is a real experiment in which we do
something to another body in the solar system and see how it reacts."
NASA approved the $280 million mission in May following an 18-month
preliminary design review.
Deep Impact will be equipped with a 770-pound copper impactor that will
separate from the spacecraft a day before pounding into the comet. A camera
on the impactor is expected to relay close-up images of the comet's surface
until the crash. Cameras on the mother ship itself will then record the
impact and image the interior of the comet.
"The biggest challenge of the mission is making sure we have a very stable
flyby spacecraft that is able to track the event as the impactor reaches the
comet," said Delamere.
"We'll have 800 seconds or so to gather images and data. All this makes the
flyby spacecraft critical because it will be traveling through a hazardous
area filled with cometary material - and fragments that could destroy the
spacecraft."
NASA's last close encounter with a comet was Deep Space 1's flyby of Comet
Borrelly in September. In February, the NEAR science probe successfully
landed on an asteroid.
In addition to Deep Impact, NASA is planning to launch the Contour mission
to study at least two comets close-up, while the European Space Agency is
gearing up for its Rosetta mission to land on a comet and scratch its
surface. Already en route to a comet is NASA's Stardust mission, which is to
pluck samples of comet dust and return them to Earth.
Copyright ) 2001 Discovery Communications Inc.
============================
* LETTERS TO THE MODERATOR *
============================
(9) METEORITE CLAIM FROM LEONIDS?
>From Phil Plait <badastro@badastronomy.com>
Benny-
While watching TV this morning, I caught the tail end of a report on NBC's
Today Show about a family who think some meteorites hit their house the
night of the Leonids peak. They even had samples they showed briefly (which
looked to me like sedimentary rocks, and not meteorites). They were from
Illinois, and said scientists from the Field museum would be looking at
their samples. I have not been able to find any more info on this, even on
the Today Show website. I was hoping
some of the people who read CCNet may know more. I suspect this will turn
out just like the case of a New Hampshire couple who thought they got hit
last December. That turned out to be fireworks or something similar. If
anyone has more info, please email me at badastro@badastronomy.com. Thanks!
-Phil Plait
* * * * * The Bad Astronomer * * * *
Phil Plait badastro@badastronomy.com
The Bad Astronomy Web Page: http://www.badastronomy.com
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