[meteorite-list] Researcher Seeks Videos Of Park Forest Meteoroid

From: Ron Baalke <baalke_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Thu Apr 22 10:25:36 2004
Message-ID: <200305061508.IAA02768_at_zagami.jpl.nasa.gov>

http://www.daily-journal.com/content/?id=25971

Researcher seeks videos of Park Forest meteoroid
Bill Byrns
Daily Journal (Illinois)
May 2, 2003

A Canadian researcher is seeking video or audio recordings of the car-size meteor
that roared across the Journal area just before midnight on March 26 and
showered fragments across a wide area of Park Forest.

"We are looking for videos which show either the direct fireball image or shadows
cast by the light" explains Dr. Peter Brown of the Meteor Physics Group of the
University of Western Ontario.

"Also video records showing either of the preceding with audio recordings of the
sonic booms would be very useful,'' Brown says.

"The meteoroid was first seen in Missouri, then across Illinois before it hit Park
Forest,'' said local meteorite expert James Schwade of Kankakee.

The fireball and sonic boom shook windows and residents across portions of
Kankakee and Will counties. Sighting were reported from Bloomington northward
to Park Forest. The boom when the meteroid broke up was heard as far north as
western Canada.

Most of the fragments have been found on roads, lawns and forest preserves
around Park Forest.

One 6.5 pound chunk crashed through a resident's roof and kitchen, bounced off the
basement floor and landed on a table. A slightly smaller fragment fell through a roof,
hit a window and narrowly missed a sleeping teenager.

Schwade described the fragments as "stony meteorites that came out of the
Asteroid Belt between Jupiter and Mars.''

"Ultralow-frequency sound measurements made 684 miles away in Manitoba
indicate that the fireball released the kinetic-energy a half-to-1 kilotons of TNT,''
Brown said.

"Meteoroids this size hit Earth about a half dozen times per year but rarely over
thickly settled areas," he added.

The Park Forest Meteoroid produced the largest meteorite fall in the United States
in the last five years and the first to drop hundreds of fragments over a major urban
area.

Brown has already collected several videos recording the fireball's motion. "If
additional videos from other viewing angles can be found, it should be possible to
determine an accurate orbit for the wayward object before it encountered Earth.''

Brown chairs the meteor physics group at the University of Western Ontario. He
can be contacted by e-mail at: pbrown_at_uwo.ca
Received on Tue 06 May 2003 11:08:16 AM PDT