[meteorite-list] Meteor Crater Impactor?

From: Meteorites USA <eric_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Fri, 10 Sep 2010 02:59:53 -0700
Message-ID: <4C8A0199.3000004_at_meteoritesusa.com>

Hi Sterling, Thanks for the answer, and links.

Still have a question though. I'm more curious about the angle of
descent. The paper mentions an angle of 45 degrees.

This seems like a very "safe" guess. Are there any data, or information
on the angle of descent other than in the paper you provided a link to.

See this crater photo from Google Earth:
http://www.mhcmagazine.com/images/crater.jpg

The crater is not perfectly round as would be expected from an impactor
coming in at a sharper angle.In fact the crater is more elliptical in
shape. It appears as if the impactor hit at an angle quite a bit
shallower than 45 degrees.

Is it possible the impactor came in at a shallower angle?

Regards,
Eric


On 9/10/2010 1:34 AM, Sterling K. Webb wrote:
> Eric, List,
>
> That is the conclusion of the 2005 paper in "Nature" by
> Melosh and Collins. Their computer models suggest it
> fragmented and came in as a swarm of pieces, much
> slowed by the atmosphere.
>
> Here's two popular articles:
> http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2005/03/0310_050310_meteorcrater.html
>
> and
> http://www.astronomy.com/asy/default.aspx?c=a&id=2965
>
> Here's original paper:
> http://amcg.ese.ic.ac.uk/~gsc/publications/articles/download/article7.pdf
>
> Well, one page from Nature, Vol. 434, 10 March, 2005.
>
>
>
> Sterling K. Webb
> ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Meteorites USA"
> <eric at meteoritesusa.com>
> To: "Meteorite-list" <meteorite-list at meteoritecentral.com>
> Sent: Thursday, September 09, 2010 10:44 AM
> Subject: [meteorite-list] Meteor Crater Impactor?
>
>
>> Hi List,
>>
>> Can someone tell me the proposed/accepted angle of descent of the
>> asteroid which formed Meteor Crater in AZ?
>>
>> Wikipedia has the impactor at 50 meters across, and velocity at 12.8
>> km/s. Is this accurate?
>>
>> Eric
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Received on Fri 10 Sep 2010 05:59:53 AM PDT