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

From: lebofsky at lpl.arizona.edu <lebofsky_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Tue, 24 Apr 2012 14:58:07 -0700
Message-ID: <472dc6f4338cf4de14f4ebb0bb173822.squirrel_at_webmail.lpl.arizona.edu>

Stuart:

Have you ever watched any old war movies? Fighter pilots attack from the
direction of the Sun. This was a daytime fireball and so probably came in
from the sunward side, so not easy to detect.

Larry

> So my question is.....why didn't anyone detect this obviously huge
> meteoroid
> in space before entry?
>
>
>
>
> *****************************
> Stuart McDaniel
> Lawndale, NC
> Secr.,
> Cleve. Co. Astronomical Society
>
> IMCA #9052
> Sirius Meteorites
>
> Node35 - Sentinel All Sky
>
> http://spacerocks.weebly.com
>
> *********************************
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Ron Baalke
> Sent: Tuesday, April 24, 2012 4:40 PM
> To: Meteorite Mailing List
> Subject: [meteorite-list] Fireball Over California/Nevada: How Big Was It?
>
>
> 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
>
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Received on Tue 24 Apr 2012 05:58:07 PM PDT