[meteorite-list] Meteor falls over Centre Wellington

From: Mike Groetz <mpg444_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Thu, 6 Nov 2008 07:11:38 -0800 (PST)
Message-ID: <72980.20770.qm_at_web33005.mail.mud.yahoo.com>

http://www.centrewellington.com/news.php?id=769


Meteor falls over Centre Wellington
Published - Nov 5th, 2008
By Francis Baker
    
 

If you were awake early on the morning of Oct. 15 and heard or saw something strange in the sky, the University of Western Ontario wants to hear from you.
The university?s Meteor Group tracked a fireball in the earth?s atmosphere over the northeast part of Wellington County at 5:28 a.m. on Wednesday, Oct. 15. They believe meteorites could have come to earth across a section of Centre Wellington.
The Physics and Astronomy Department at Western has a network of all-sky cameras in southern Ontario that scan the sky monitoring for meteors. When tracking cameras lost sight of the object, it was still about one kilogram in size, 37 kilometres up, and moving very slowly, said Phil McCausland, a postdoctoral researcher in Planetary Science.
It could have hit the ground in one large piece, in several large fragments, or as a mass of pea-sized bits, he said.
?It could be anything from pea-sized, gram-sized pieces ? through to golf-ball-sized fragments,? he said. ?We don?t know how much it broke up.?
McCausland and associate professor Peter Brown are hoping local residents can help them recover one or more meteorite fragments if they came down - they're looking for people who saw or, even better, heard something when the fragments came to earth.
?Sometimes in fall events, people report hearing a whistling sound,? McCausland said said.
But it?s far more likely people saw what looked like a relatively slow fireball moving across the sky, which was recorded by the university's sky camera network. Several people have reported seeing the fireball trail.
?Eyewitness reports are helpful,? he said, ?because people?s eyesight is more sensitive than our cameras.?
A large fragment ? even a golf-ball-sized rock, would cause visible damage to a structure like a shed or barn.
More likely, fragments missed structures and hit the ground. What people would find is a small hole in the earth with a rock at the bottom, he said.
By tracking backwards using the camera observations, researchers have determined the meteorite was on a typical Earth-crossing asteroid-type orbit, and expect is was a stony-type object, McCausland said.
Several people have called in with objects they?ve discovered, but none relate to this event, he said.
For more information or assistance in identifying possible meteorites, contact Phil McCausland at the University of Western Ontario, 519-661-2111, ext. 87985 or via email at pmccausl at uwo.ca.



      
Received on Thu 06 Nov 2008 10:11:38 AM PST