[meteorite-list] New Zealand Police Have 'Meteorite' Fragment

From: Ron Baalke <baalke_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Tue Sep 12 19:39:16 2006
Message-ID: <200609122339.QAA24597_at_zagami.jpl.nasa.gov>

http://www.stuff.co.nz/stuff/0,2106,3795900a10,00.html

Police have 'meteorite' fragment
www.stuff.co.nz (New Zealand)
13 September 2006

A piece of 'space debris' found at a Dunsandel property last night will
be handed over to staff from the National Radiation Laboratory this
morning, Christchurch police said today.

Police said a police officer from Lincoln collected the item from a
Canterbury farm last night and brought it into the police station around
9.30pm last night.

"It is very light...almost weightless and (the farmers) have never seen
anything like it before," said police southern communications centre
supervisor Paul Visser.

Visser said the object was about 10cm long, 5cm wide and deep, and too
light to be rock, with an "unknown texture".

The exact location of the find has not been revealed.

Flashing across the sky at speeds of 40,000kmh, a meteor in "terminal
fireball" sent a sonic shockwave across the South Island on Tuesday
afternoon, startling and frightening thousands of residents. The sonic
boom from the meteor speeding through the Earth's atmosphere at 2.55pm
yesterday was heard by people from Hinds, south of Ashburton, to Blenheim.

The boom caused buildings to shake and windows to break, and prompted a
flood of calls to emergency services.

Scientists have said it is unlikely anything will be found of the
meteor, which was probably no bigger than a basketball.

Mount John Observatory resident superintendent Alan Gilmore said
evidence pointed to the meteor exploding in a "terminal fireball" as it
got closer to land.

"We did hear reports of a woman saying she saw a bright white light,
followed by colours, but that would have been it going 'poof' into a
luminous cloud," he said.

The noise indicated it was travelling faster than sound, possibly over
40,000kmh, slowing when it hit the Earth's thicker air.

Gilmore said it was unusual to see a meteor during the day, with the
last reported daytime sighting in the North Island six years ago.

University of Canterbury astronomist Professor John Hearnshaw said it
was "moderately rare" for a meteor to burn up in the atmosphere and be
found on the ground.

The meteor most likely exploded as it hit denser air in the upper
troposphere - the lowest layer of the Earth's atmosphere - or in the
stratosphere above that at an altitude of between 12km and 50km above
sea level, he said.

People from across the South Island were stunned by the meteor's flaming
progress and sonic boom.

Cavan O'Connell, of Hoon Hay, Christchurch, who caught the event on
camera, said he thought the enormous bang was a plane exploding.

"Here's this huge ball of smoke, quite a few thousand feet up. It was
above the cloud layer, so straight away I thought of September 11," he
said.

"It seemed to be on the main Dunedin-Auckland air route... and
(September 11) has been on everyone's minds for the last few weeks."

The ball of smoke was "perfectly round" and appeared to be pulsating, he
said.

Pilot Neville van Eerten was on a Cessna training flight near Rangiora
when he saw a flash in the sky.

"It was right in front of our window," he said. "It broke into two huge
pieces and then two smaller pieces. It was a huge fireball."

The object was "several thousand feet" above the plane, he said.

Jill Gillespie, of Geraldine, was driving to Christchurch yesterday when
a falling object caught her attention.

"Out in front of my windscreen something was falling out of the sky and
it was flaming," she said.

"I couldn't believe it. I was looking around for the rest of the plane."

Gillespie watched the object fall for four or five seconds.

"It seemed to take ages to land. It reminded me of a falling star, but
much much closer. It looked about the size of a fencepost from where I
was and it was just flaming," she said.

Kaiapoi resident Tony Burgess was up a ladder painting his house when he
saw a ball of fire moving across the sky.

As the flaming ball travelled across the sky it broke into about four
pieces and fell to the ground.

There was a lot of smoke in the air after the object broke up, he said.

Soon after, the ball disappeared from view and a massive noise shook his
house.

"I really felt it. It was like a big boom that kept going for about 15
seconds. I felt this wave," he said.

Police southern communications centre shift supervisor Paul Visser said
police fielded more than 100 calls within minutes of the "bang".

"People were very good and quite keen to let us know where it was coming
from," he said.

Fire communications fielded about 20 calls after the "explosion".

No major damage was reported to emergency services.

GNS Science seismologist Kevin Fenaughty said its instruments had
detected surface and soundwaves at two recording sites, one at the base
of the Port Hills in Cashmere and the other at McQueens Valley on Banks
Peninsula.

Senior Constable Chris Hughey, of Hanmer Springs, likened the meteor to
Haley's Comet, which he saw when it last passed near Earth in 1986.

"All it looked like was a vapour trail from a plane coming in at huge
altitude."
Received on Tue 12 Sep 2006 07:39:13 PM PDT