[meteorite-list] Fireball Sighting Over Massachusetts

From: Ron Baalke <baalke_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Thu, 26 Feb 2009 16:04:51 -0800 (PST)
Message-ID: <200902270004.QAA24842_at_zagami.jpl.nasa.gov>

http://www.ack.net/022609fireball.html

"Fireball" sighting maybe a meteorite
By Eliot Baker
The Inquirer and Mirror (Nantucket, Massachusetts)
February 26, 2009

Island residents are being urged by Maria Mitchell Association director
of astronomy Vladimir Strelnitski to keep their eyes open for meteorites
around Surfside and the south shore in the coming days following an
unconfirmed sighting of a fireball blazing across the early-morning sky
Friday, Feb. 20 at 4:30 a.m.

Terry Galschneider was up early watching television when she said a
dramatic orange fireball "lit up the sky" for five seconds. She said the
fireball was too large and bright to have been a shooting star or a
helicopter. Her full description to Strelnitski left him to "not exclude
that it fell in the ocean, but maybe even on land."

The object's brightness suggests it would be relatively close to
Galschneider, although its lack of sound made that even less possible to
tell for certain. He said it was highly unlikely to have been debris
from colliding satellites.

The sighting was not confirmed by either Nantucket airport officials or
by the police, and no other reports of fiery objects in the sky Friday
in Massachusetts have been made to NASA, or to astronomy departments at
Boston University, the University Massachusetts at Lowell, or the
American Meteor Society. Other islanders who may have spotted the
fireball are encouraged to contact Strelnitski at the Maria Mitchell
Association at (508) 228-5273.

Though unlikely, Strelnitski said discovering a meteorite - or part of
one - on Nantucket would be unprecedented and could yield important
information to scientists. People around Surfside especially are
encouraged to look for unusual small craters with valleys on the surface
with strange objects inside. Meteors can be a piece of metal, a greenish
or grayish piece of stone, or a black piece of organic matter that
resembles coal called carbonatious condrite, the rarest of all meteorites.
Received on Thu 26 Feb 2009 07:04:51 PM PST