[meteorite-list] Fireball Over California/Nevada: How Big Was It?

From: Ron Baalke <baalke_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Tue, 24 Apr 2012 13:40:52 -0700 (PDT)
Message-ID: <201204242040.q3OKeqFg004526_at_zagami.jpl.nasa.gov>

http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2012-114

Fireball Over California/Nevada: How Big Was It?
Jet Propulsion Laboratory
April 24, 2012

A bright ball of light traveling east to west was seen over the skies of
central/northern California Sunday morning, April 22. The former space
rock-turned-flaming-meteor entered Earth's atmosphere around 8 a.m. PDT.
Reports of the fireball have come in from as far north as Sacramento,
Calif. and as far east as North Las Vegas, Nev.

Bill Cooke of the Meteoroid Environments Office at NASA's Marshall Space
Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., estimates the object was about the
size of a minivan, weighed in at around 154,300 pounds (70 metric tons)
and at the time of disintegration released energy equivalent to a
5-kiloton explosion.

"Most meteors you see in the night's sky are the size of tiny stones or
even grains of sand and their trail lasts all of a second or two," said
Don Yeomans of NASA's Near-Earth Object Program Office at the Jet
Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. "Fireballs you can see
relatively easily in the daytime and are many times that size - anywhere
from a baseball-sized object to something as big as a minivan."

Elizabeth Silber of the Meteor Group at the Western University of
Canada, Ontario, estimates the location of its explosion in the upper
atmosphere above California's Central Valley.

Eyewitnesses of this fireball join a relatively exclusive club. "An
event of this size might happen about once a year," said Yeomans. "But
most of them occur over the ocean or an uninhabited area, so getting to
see one is something special."

NASA detects, tracks and characterizes asteroids and comets passing
close to Earth using both ground- and space-based telescopes. The
Near-Earth Object Observations Program, commonly called "Spaceguard,"
discovers these objects, characterizes a subset of them, and establishes
their orbits to determine if any could be potentially hazardous to our
planet. JPL manages the Near-Earth Object Program Office for NASA's
Science Mission Directorate in Washington. JPL is a division of the
California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.
More information about asteroids and near-Earth objects is at:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/asteroidwatch .

DC Agle 818-393-9011
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
agle at jpl.nasa.gov

2012-114
Received on Tue 24 Apr 2012 04:40:52 PM PDT