[meteorite-list] New Fall ?

From: Dennis Wells <dwheadstone_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Wed, 29 Apr 2009 09:57:06 -0700
Message-ID: <46be6ec30904290957g39bbecbcwe4fd44c8bc611179_at_mail.gmail.com>

suspected meteor lights up sky east of Kingman

By JIM SECKLER/The Daily News

Wednesday, April 29, 2009 1:20 AM CDT

KINGMAN - It wasn't Armageddon but Kingman residents and residents
across Northern Arizona witnessed a fireball late Saturday night.

The Mohave County Sheriff's Office took numerous reports of a fireball
in the sky near midnight Saturday. One witness saw a bright green glow
falling from the sky near the Peacock Mountains then reported a big
white flash of light as it hit the ground. Another witness also saw a
bright green glow falling from the north/northwest direction. The glow
seemed to get bigger and bigger until it hit the ground becoming a
bright orange flash.

Other witnesses also saw a bright green glowing object fall from the
sky and hit near the Peacock Mountains, also bursting into a big
orange light, Mohave County Sheriff's Office spokeswoman Trish Carter
said.

The sheriff's office contacted the Federal Aviation Administration,
which reported that there were no missing airplanes. The sheriff's
office believes the object was a meteor.

Lowell Observatory spokesman Steele Wotkyns said there were reports
from Kingman to the New Mexico border of a flash in the sky Saturday
night. Most meteors burn up before hitting the earth and most are no
bigger than a grain of sand.

Astronomer Jeff Hall, who works at the Lowell Observatory in
Flagstaff, also witnessed the fireball around 11 p.m. and possibly a
second fireball about 30 minutes later. Hall said there is no way of
knowing how big a meteor is. There were no reports of anyone finding
the object. If the meteor is the size of a car as it hits the
atmosphere, it could be big enough to hit the ground depending how it
enters the atmosphere. A colleague of Hall's said it might be space
junk.

Generally, meteors travel about 30 miles per second or 108,000 mph.
Where Saturday night's suspected meteor hit is not known until pieces
are found. Wotkyns said meteors the size of basketballs hit the earth
on average one every month but with three-quarters of the earth being
ocean, most land in the water. Meteors rarely are big enough to hit
the ground, he added.
Received on Wed 29 Apr 2009 12:57:06 PM PDT