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Re: Size of Greenland meteorite

They report that the dust was found over a several 
hundred square kilometer area.  The AF gives explosive
force, but I wonder what the over-pressures were at 
groung level: how high up this one detonated.
                              Best wishes - 
                                 Ed

---"Piper R.W. Hollier"  wrote:
>
> At 18:20 6-08-98 -0500, you wrote:
> >It's really interesting to read the CNN reports on the hunt in
Greenland.
> Has
> >anyone heard how large this meteorite is estimated to be?  It
appears that
> they've
> >been analyzing snow samples to determine the general area of
impact(s).
> From that
> >description what they're hunting for must be significantly large.
> 
> I don't know about estimates of the physical size of the
meteorite(s), but
> there has been an estimate of the size of the explosion, posted to
the list
> by George Zay on 9 June:
> 
> > I received the following information from Peter Brown yesterday.
It is USAF
> > surveillance satellite data released in regards to it's detection
of various
> > recent fireballs. I haven't seen it posted on these folders yet,
so I'm
> > posting it.
> > GeoZay
> > [snip]
> > On 9 December 1997 at approximately 08:15:55.2 UT, sensors aboard a
> > U.S. Department of Defense satellite recorded the bright flash of
> > an apparent meteoroid disintegrating in the atmosphere over
> > Greenland. The peak radiated intensity recorded on this event 
> > was 9.5E10 watts/sr (using a 6000K blackbody model for the
> > radiation). Correspondingly, the total radiated energy of the
> > event was 2.7E11 Joules.
> 
> ---------------------------------------
> 
> Using the conversion factor 1 kiloton = = 4.2E12 Joule, the
explosion was
> the equivalent of about one-sixtienth of a kiloton or 64 tons of TNT
-- not
> a Tunguska-class event by any means, but a sizable bang nevertheless. 
> 
> Despite the size of the explosion, if the object disintegrated
explosively
> before reaching the ground there may not be any crater to be found;
if it
> was very friable, the fragments may be very small.
> 
> Piper R.W. Hollier
> 

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