[meteorite-list] Tagish Lake

From: Sterling K. Webb <sterling_k_webb_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Thu, 21 Dec 2006 18:16:05 -0600
Message-ID: <008d01c7255e$5f839180$a925e146_at_ATARIENGINE>

Hi, List,


    Here is a narrative of the Canadian recovery
effort in the form of personal logs or diaries by
the searchers and finders:
http://aquarid.physics.uwo.ca/~pbrown/Videos/recovery_article.htm
    It details everything that all the "recoverers"
did and when. You can judge the recovery effort
for yourself.

    The fireball was Jan, 18. The meteorites on Tagish
Lake were found by Jim Brook on Jan. 25. He picked
up 17, about 1 kilo total, and freezer-bagged them and
put them in his freezer. He lives in the area (very few do)
and was given the bags and asked to look out for possible
meteorites. He found them while driving his pickup truck
across the frozen lake. On Jan. 27, a blizzard covered
the lake and the meteorites.
    Brook took the meteorites to the Yukon Geoscience
Office in Whitehorse and they called in Peter Brown, who
called in Alan Hildebrandt. They identified them right away
and started lining up money. On Feb. 15-27, the first recovery
expedition went to Tagish. They interviewed every witness
and collected photos and videos of the fall. They couldn't
find any meteorites on the lake.

    McCausland and Plotkin, of the U. of Western Ontario
carried out the second expedition, April 6-May 10. With
favorable weather conditions, this expedition found some
410 meteorite sites in a strewnfield approximately 16
kilometers long by three kilometers wide, and managed
to recover about 200 of these meteorites.

    That's a summary of the discovery. The URL contains
a long and full personal account, each, by Brown,
McCausland, and Plotkin in the URL given above. It
is a very interesting meteorite story which I recommend
as a good read. There's a lot to be learned from it.


Log of the Recovery:
    Even though I stumbled across the Tagish Lake
Recovery Log of every specimen while Googling,
it was hard to find again. The original is a .doc file
(for MSWord):
http://meteoritics.org/Online%20Supplements/Hildebrand_online%20tables.doc

    Here's the Google cache, which is in HTML,
which may be more accessible for some:
http://72.14.203.104/search?q=cache:TuhAYNW3BYoJ:meteoritics.org/Online%2520Supplements/Hildebrand_online%2520tables.doc+HG-04+Not+a+meteorite+--+dung&hl=en&gl=us&ct=clnk&cd=2

    This document has a complete record of every
find, with remarks and description of each individual
stone, and summarries of witness statements, also worth
looking through.

    The incoming object was about 200,000 kilograms,
5 feet in diameter (if spherical), and it fragmented in a
burst equal to 2000 to 3000 tons of TNT.


Sterling K. Webb
-----------------------------------------------------------------
----- Original Message -----
From: "David Weir" <dgweir at earthlink.net>
To: "Michael Farmer" <meteoriteguy at yahoo.com>
Cc: "Meteorite List" <meteorite-list at meteoritecentral.com>
Sent: Thursday, December 21, 2006 2:47 PM
Subject: Re: [meteorite-list] Tagish Lake


> But Michael, think of the potential value that the strewn field map may
> provide us someday (I know I'm not smart enough to imagine it). Maybe
> Richard and Roland could spell out for us the great importance of such a
> map.
>
> David
>
>
> Michael Farmer wrote:
>> ... You can all forget about recovery of more
>> Tagish Lake meteorites. The Canadians lost it all when
>> they closed off the site to all but a few people, who
>> took two months to make a neat little map of locations
>> of pieces frozen into the ice, then lost them all when
>> a fast thaw came along. Great job scientists, you lost
>> 99% of the rarest meteorite fall on the planet because
>> you wanted to keep it all secret and to yourselves....
>
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>
Received on Thu 21 Dec 2006 07:16:05 PM PST