[meteorite-list] Team Seeks Remains Of Nighttime Fireball In Colorado

From: Ron Baalke <baalke_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Thu Apr 22 10:22:32 2004
Message-ID: <200306010346.UAA11348_at_zagami.jpl.nasa.gov>

http://www.gjsentinel.com/news/newsfd/auto/feed/news/2003/05/31/1054357963.03033.7221.2164.html

Team seeks remains of nighttime fireball

By MIKE McKIBBIN
The Daily Sentinel (Grand Junction, Colorado)
May 31, 2003

MONTROSE - A team of researchers is in Montrose and Gunnison this weekend to
gather information that could lead to the discovery of fragments of a fireball
that lit the nighttime skies in five states last Thanksgiving.

The Nov. 28 fireball weighed around 200 pounds before it broke up about 23
miles above the ground, according to researchers with the Denver Museum of
Nature and Science, formerly the Denver Museum of Natural History.

Curator of Geology Dr. Jack Murphy said it may have been the largest and
brightest fireball to come down over Colorado in several decades. The rock
may have broken apart near the Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park,
about 10 miles northeast of Montrose.

But Murphy and Chris Peterson, a physicist and research assistant, believe
meteorites might have landed in more than one place along the fireball's
flight path. They think Gunnison and Montrose counties are likely locations.

Murphy and his team gave a presentation Friday night at Montrose High School
on what local residents should look for if they go out meteorite hunting.
After a search near the north rim of the Black Canyon today, another
presentation is scheduled for Sunday at 10 a.m. at the Elk Creek Visitor
Center in Gunnison.

The fireball was the first to be recorded by a video camera linked to the
museum's All Sky monitoring program. The camera is on top of Montrose High
School, while a security camera on top of a building in Longmont also filmed
the fireball.

Nearly 350 witness reports from Colorado, Kansas, Nebraska, Wyoming and Utah
were received.

"The eyewitness reports are especially helpful in determining the track of
the fireball," Murphy said.

His team planned to interview Montrose-area witnesses this weekend.

But Murphy isn't sure what - if anything - might be found. Of Colorado's 81
confirmed meteorites, only five were found on the Western Slope, he said.

"Most of them are plowed up on the eastern plains, but they do fall evenly
everywhere," Murphy said. "It's just a matter of people finding them and
they're hard to recognize in the mountains where you have so many rocks and
boulders. They can also bury themselves and some of them erode fairly rapidly."

Montrose High School science teacher Mike Nadiak and some of his students
analyzed data from their school's All Sky camera as part of the investigation.

"We got about a half dozen really good pictures," Nadiak said. "It looks
like a bright light, then it gets brighter and then it explodes. It was one
of the most amazing things for people to see in the sky around here."

The security camera video shows the rapid, fiery atmospheric entry and a
large bright flare as the meteor broke apart midway through its descent.
After the flare, the video shows the meteor continuing toward the southwest
horizon.

Last week, Murphy and his team were in Rifle to donate a plaster of Paris
replica of the 113-pound Rifle meteorite to the Rifle Creek Museum.

That meteorite was found around 1948, about 10 miles northwest of Rifle.
Until the last few years, it was believed the Rifle rock was a piece from
the well-known Canyon Diablo meteorite in Arizona. Recent study confirmed
its unique geological properties and it is now listed in the World Catalog
of Meteorites as the "Rifle" meteorite.

Mike McKibbin can be reached via e-mail at mmckibbin_at_gjds.com.
Received on Sat 31 May 2003 11:46:52 PM PDT