[meteorite-list] Fireballs & Known Meteor Showers

From: cdtucson at cox.net <cdtucson_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Fri, 16 Apr 2010 17:16:00 -0400
Message-ID: <20100416171600.QFM7N.20877.imail_at_fed1rmwml39>

Chris, Sterling,
Thank you for those very good explanations. I assume from that , that you have ruled out this fireball as being a related part of the current Lyrid meteor shower.
The reason I asked is because during The Taurids meteor shower of 2008 (Nov. 8-14.) On Nov. 8th my wife and I had occasion to be hit on the windshield by a prospect Taurid meteorite?
At the time Sterling correctly identified it from photos I had posted as a piece of road tar. Knowing there are hardly any roads with tar in space. I subsequently went back to the impact site . After a short time I was able to find on the side of the street a much better prospect than the road tar. Yes, it does look unusual for a meteorite and after filing a window it is mostly magnetite with olivine inclusions clearly visible from it's exterior crust as well. But, being magnetite I suspect nobody will want to investigate it. This In spite of the fact that magnetite and forsterite ( olivine) are two of the minerals that we do know exist in space and are associated with comets specifically.
Here is a link to it once again but, with the rock found the second time looking..

http://www.flickr.com/photos/13030472 at N07/sets/72157622480549073

Hopefully this is all of the extraordinary proof we will ever need.
Although I do realize these weirdo objects like this may require testing for Cosmic ray exposure.
Weighs in at 4.46 grams but is still much bigger than any IDP's. (Interplanetary dust particles.)
Thanks Carl

--
Carl or Debbie Esparza
Meteoritemax
---- Chris Peterson <clp at alumni.caltech.edu> wrote: 
> The thing is, we really have a very poor idea what comets are made of. 
> Despite a few probes, they remain very mysterious things. Some comets may 
> essentially be asteroids with volatiles, some asteroids may be comets that 
> no longer have volatiles. The connection between comets and CC-like material 
> is pretty tenuous, as well. We don't know if cometary material fails 
> (generally, or always) to make it to the ground because it's too fragile, or 
> because the meteoroids in a cometary debris trail are simply too small.
> 
> The reliable way to say that a fireball is unrelated to a shower is not 
> mineralogical, but depends on identifying the source of the parent body- 
> either the radiant or the actual orbit. I try to rule out active showers 
> with every fireball I investigate. Although I have a fair degree of 
> confidence from the beginning whether I'm seeing something of cometary or 
> asteroidal origin, it never hurts to support that with evidence. 
> Fortunately, there seems to be plenty of instrumented data on the Wisconsin 
> event to establish the radiant with fair accuracy. If the radiant matches an 
> active shower, we don't know for certain what's going on. But if it doesn't, 
> we can conclusively disassociate the fireball from known showers.
> 
> Chris
> 
> *****************************************
> Chris L Peterson
> Cloudbait Observatory
> http://www.cloudbait.com
> 
> 
> ----- Original Message ----- 
> From: "Sterling K. Webb" <sterling_k_webb at sbcglobal.net>
> To: "Meteorite List" <meteorite-list at meteoritecentral.com>
> Cc: <GeoZay at aol.com>
> Sent: Friday, April 16, 2010 2:17 PM
> Subject: Re: [meteorite-list] Fireballs & Known Meteor Showers
> 
> 
> > Carl, List,
> >
> >> how we know with certainty  that the WI fall is not
> >> related to the known shower of the same time period?
> >
> > The Wisconsin Stone is a probable H5. The source
> > of the Lyrid meteor shower is Comet Thatcher (C/1861 G1).
> > I doubt that Comet Thatcher is an H5 condrite body.
> > It sure don't act like one...
> >
> > "Certainty" is a tricky term. I've never been to Comet
> > Thatcher and drilled into it, so I can't swear you out
> > an affidavit that it isn't an H5 body, but the claim that
> > it is would be extraordinary.
> >
> > And extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof,
> > as another guy named Carl used to say...
> >
> >
> > Sterling K. Webb
> 
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Received on Fri 16 Apr 2010 05:16:00 PM PDT