[meteorite-list] Fw: {MPML} Can anyone help answer this fellow's meteor questions?

From: W&S Schroer <schroer_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Thu, 4 Feb 2010 15:09:08 +1030
Message-ID: <28A225D15CA54BC68DF87B7327AF2FE4_at_WERNER>

Hi list,
I found the following message on the 'Minor Planet Mailing List'. If anyone
wants to answer any of the questions below, he/she should write to
utahsilver at yahoo.com

Cheers
Werner Schroer




----- Original Message -----
From: "Patrick Wiggins" <paw at wirelessbeehive.com>
To: "mpml mpml (list)" <mpml at yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Thursday, February 04, 2010 2:51 PM
Subject: {MPML} Can anyone help answer this fellow's meteor questions?


I just received the following from a Robert Handley at utahsilver at yahoo.com.
What I do _not_ know about meteor(ites) would fill several books so I can't
answer his questions but hope someone here can.
Any takers?

Many thanks,
patrick


My father has asked me to help him find out about something that he had
experienced in his youth. When he was around 10 years old, give or take a
couple of years, which would have been about 1932. He was out side his home,
which was located at Lofgreen, UT <a couple hour drive SW of Salt Lake
City>. He and his sister were outside and he happened to be looking up at
the sky when he saw like 6 or 7 fireballs/meteorites pass thru the sky to
the west of him. They passed by him and headed in northerly direction.
Passing out of his sight in a second over the mountain. He said they were
moving very fast, so fast that his sister who was with him never saw them,
before she could look up and look in the direction of the fireballs. I?ve
asked him a bunch of question about his experience and tried to figure a
little bit about it. At first he thought they were quite high up in the air
since they went over the mountains to the north. But he also told me he
could hear them roaring very loudly thru the air and that he felt the heat
of them on his face. He also told me that he felt like a pressure/force
ripple thru his body. This I think my have been something like a shockwave
caused by the fireballs/meteorites as they passed thru the air over him, but
that is just a guess on my part. I also asked him if the trajectory was
steep or was it more flat, and he told me is was fairly flat. He told me the
largest of them was like what he thought to be like 6 feet across down to
like 2 feet across on the smaller ones. These were followed by a mass of
small black tiny pieces that were not burning. He says it happened so fast
and so long ago that it is hard to recall much of the detail about this
experience. My thought is if he could hear and feel the heat and shockwave
off them they couldn?t have been to high up in the sky.
My questions are, I was wondering if you know of any fireballs/meteors that
passed over Utah in or around that time of 1931 to 1933? Also from what I
have read not all of them hit the earth. Also I take they are not called
meteorites unless they do hit the earth. The next question is how high up
could they of been up in the air and still be able to hear and feel the heat
off of them? Another question is with them being that low and with a fairly
flat trajectory, how far do you think they could of traveled before falling
to the ground if they did do that?
Not to bother you too much since I?m not sure if you have such answers for
my dad and me I will end my letter here. I hope you can give me some sort of
insight or information about my question or if not perhaps forward my letter
to some one who might or let me know of such persons and/or groups that
might help me understand and help my understand and know what he saw as a
youth.
Received on Wed 03 Feb 2010 11:39:08 PM PST