[meteorite-list] Bunbura Roskhole-- new Australian fall

From: Darren Garrison <cynapse_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Thu, 07 May 2009 13:21:29 -0500
Message-ID: <ij9605pcce0qoeorfu5nb6pg6anlel60vr_at_4ax.com>

http://praguemonitor.com/2009/05/07/czechs-uncover-rare-meteorite-australia


Czechs uncover rare meteorite in Australia
C(TK |
7 May 2009

Prague, May 6 (CTK) - Czech astronomers have counted the trajectory and the
landing of a rare meteorite from the inner Solar System and found its fragments
in southwest Australia, along with their Australian and British colleagues,
Pavel Spurny, from the Academy' Astronomic Institute, said Wednesday.

The astronomers have called the meteorite Bunbura Roskhole, which means a black
pearl.

The meteorite was detected by a new bolide network in Nullarbor desert that
Spurny and his British and Australian colleagues have installed.

It has been the fifth meteorite with its "genealogy" in the world, said Spurny,
head of the interplanetary mass section.

Three of them were fully mapped by Czech astronomers, who have ranked among top
experts in this field for decades, while the U.S. and Canadian teams mapped one
each.

Czechs have created the European bolide network the most important part of which
is exactly the Czech network of monitoring stations.

The network in Nullarbor desert covers the area of 200,000 square kilometres,
which is 2.5 times larger than the Czech Republic.

Spurny said the Australian bolide collided with the Earth on the trajectory
crossing the inner Solar System.

"For the first time in history astronomers have a solid body with this
trajectory in their hands," Spurny stressed.

They found three small fragments of the meteorite weighing from 150 to 180
grammes, called "achondrites" - stony meteorites from large cosmic bodies of the
Solar System that consist of material similar to terrestrial basalts and do not
contain iron.

Experts succeeded in determining the area of the meteorite landing very
precisely.

The astronomers are now testing the findings. They are convinced that they will
soon identify the matrix body which the bolide comes from, Spurny said.
Received on Thu 07 May 2009 02:21:29 PM PDT