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August 10, 1972 Fireball

Hello List,

I got my July 1999 Sky & Telescope today:

Sky&Telescope, July 1999, p. 14, 50&25 years ago:

Sky&Telescope, July 1974: "The great fireball observed on August 10,
1972, which streaked across the early afternoon skies, ... was a unique
object. It entered the atmosphere at such a small angle with the earth's
surface that it did not quite make it to the ground. Instead ... it left
the atmosphere to continue its travel around the sun ... "

The size of the parent body was estimated to be between 13 and 80
meters, the mass between 4,000 and 1 million metric tons. A similar
sight may have been witnessed in 1783.

---------------- snip ----------------

In the Sky & Telescope edition, June, 1991, p. 640, there is a BASIC
computer simulation called "Flight of a long-enduring fireball",which
"is able to do a surprisingly accurate simulation of the August 10,
1972, Earth-grazing daylight fireball that was seen by numerous people
throughout the American West... It provides an excellent test,
especially since the meteor was also tracked by a U.S. military
satellite. The spacecraft first detected the fireball at a height  of 76
km above Utah and established a velocity of 15.0 km per second.
About 40 seconds later the fireball reached perigee, 58 km above the
Idaho-Montana border, and began a gradual ascent back into space.
Some 60 seconds after perigee the meteor disappeared 102 km over
Alberta, where the body's velocity had been slowed to 14.2 km per second
by the trip through the atmosphere. The total length of the ground track
was about 1,450 km between first and last detection by the satellite."


Best wishes,

Bernd

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