[meteorite-list] Mystery solved with the Ontario event of 09 March

From: Marc Fries <chief_scientist_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Wed, 13 Mar 2013 10:24:08 -0700
Message-ID: <D4D5D586-2EDA-47ED-AEA5-E5DD539BEFE2_at_galacticanalytics.com>

Greetings, ladies and gents

        Thanks to Rob Matson and Jake Schaefer, we've located three additional video captures of the 09 March fireball over western Ontario. Thanks also to Dr. Peter Brown at the U. of Western Ontario, whose superb team also analyzed the event and shared their calculated terminus point with us. Jake interrogated additional seismometers, and all of these data sources agree that the fireball terminus was over Michigan near the town of Tecumseh. Radar signatures appear at that site, and their various characteristics are reasonably consistent with meteorites. We had identified one in particular as "interesting" early on, but I was spoofed by some unusual radar returns over Lake Erie. Those returns are now identified as weather phenomena, and this event did NOT occur over the lake. They're unusual in that they are apparently small clouds with significant internal turbulence, and are not the sort of thing I was expecting to see at night over a cold landmass. But now that we've seen them I won't be fooled by them again.
        The radar returns over the actual fireball terminus are reasonably convincing - they appear in a straight line that follows the prevailing winds, appear at the right time and place, etc. But they are quite weak, to the point that if they are meteorites then they amount to a very small total mass. We've posted this information on the GA web page but have not done the dark flight modeling. If anyone wants to go search this event let me know and I'll perform the strewn field estimation.

Cheers,
Marc Fries
Galactic Analytics LLC
Received on Wed 13 Mar 2013 01:24:08 PM PDT