Meteorites | Universe Today

So far, no images or video have surfaced of the huge fireball that was reported in the skies over Ireland on February 3, 2010. The Daily Mail posted a video, but it appears to be one from a year ago, maybe earlier. They write that meteorite hunters are on the look-out for fallen space rocks in Ireland, and David Moore of Astronomy Ireland is quoted as saying that meteorites likely landed on Irish soil and not at sea, as many witnesses who saw it along the coast said it was traveling inland.

"This is a huge event," Moore said, "There's a good chance we may end up finding this one."
Read more…

Filed under: Meteorites | 8 Comments »

We're seeing reports popping up on the internet of a huge fireball spotted over Ireland at around 6pm local time on Feb. 3, 2010. There was a video posted to You Tube which claimed to be footage of the event, but it now seems that was old footage, so we have removed the embedded video. (We'll post any new verified images or videos when they become available.) Any Irish readers out there see anything? The Irish Times said members of the public throughout the country have been reporting sightings of the fireball. The Times quoted Tommy David Moore from Astronomy Ireland: “A major explosion happened in the sky over Ireland. We think it’s a fireball, that’s a rock from space the earth has slammed into and they burn up as huge shooting stars. This one appears to have lit up the whole country. The phones here in Astronomy Ireland are going crazy.”
Read more…

Filed under: Meteorites, Observing | 10 Comments »

A meteorite came through the roof of a doctor's office in Lorton, Virginia, USA. No one was hurt, but a hole was punched through the roof and ceiling. "It came through the roof, through the fire wall through the ceiling and hit the floor," said Dr. Frank Ciampi in this video from WUSA TV. When he heard the noise, he thought a set of bookshelves had fallen down. The rock broke into pieces, but put together are about the size of a tennis ball. A planetary scientist at the Smithsonian Institution's Museum of Natural History, Cari Corrigan, confirmed the rock is a meteorite. She says the meteorite weighs just over a half pound (.22 kg) and was probably traveling about 350 kph (220 mph) when it struck the building.
Read more…

Filed under: Meteorites | 8 Comments »

Early Nov. 18th, eyewitnesses reported an explosion in the atmosphere above Colorado, Utah, Wyoming and Idaho in the western United States. Some said the fireball "turned night into day" and produced shock waves that shook the ground when it exploded just after midnight Mountain Standard Time. Infrasound recordings of the blast suggest a small asteroid hitting Earth's atmosphere and exploding with an energy of 0.5 to 1 kiloton of TNT. As the sun rose in the morning, remnants of the explosion were visible as noctilucent clouds over the region. The best video of the extremely bright event was just recently released, from the University of Utah's Eccles Observatory.
Read more…

Filed under: Meteorites | 2 Comments »

A network of time-lapse cameras set up in the Nullarbor Plain desert of Western Australia has allowed researchers to track a fallen meteorite to the ground, and enabled them to determine its original orbit and parent body. The meteorite has a composition different than that of other meteors, leading researchers to believe that it originates from a different parent body than most meteorites that impact Earth. The Desert Fireball Network, a project coordinated by the Imperial College of London, was able to track the meteor when it entered the atmosphere, giving researchers an impact location and information on where it originated. Read more…

Filed under: Asteroids, Meteorites | 1 Comment »

Opportunity has come upon another big rock on Mars. But what is it? Another meteorite? A big clump of ejecta from an old impact? There's lots of other debris scattered around this area as well. The rock has been named "Marquette Island," staying with the island theme for the other meteorites Oppy has come across, and the rover may take the "opportunity" to get closer to this rock and check it out, given the sand dunes surrounding it don't provide too much of an obstacle. So maybe next week we'll find out what it is. But in the meantime, enjoy these color and 3-D images (see more below) of the rock via Stu Atkinson from Unmannedspaceflight.com. Check out more great looks at Marquette Island at Stu's blog about Oppy's travels, Road to Endeavour.

Oh, and rumor has it that the extrication process may have begun to free the Spirit rover. Latest images show she has moved every so slightly. More as it becomes available….
Read more…

Filed under: Mars, Meteorites | 10 Comments »

A possible meteorite fall near in northern Latvia on Sunday left a crater approximately 20 meters (66 feet) in diameter and 10 meters (33 feet) deep. UPDATE: Many reports now say the impact was a fake; The Bad Astronomer says "shovel" marks were found around the perimeter of the crater; additionally, a burning impactor is highly unlikely (see video below). And here's an article from the Associated press. , and another from Yahoo news, where a phone company in Latvia admits the "crater" was a publicity stunt.

Read more…

Filed under: Meteorites | 20 Comments »

Three golf ball-sized fragments have been found from a meteorite that created a brilliant fireball seen over Ontario, Canada on September 25, 2009. The first meteorite fragment recovered did some damage to the windshield of a Nissan Pathfinder, and now two other fragments have been found on nearby properties. The meteor made headlines initially because it was captured on video by Western’s Southern Ontario Meteor Network (SOMN) on seven of its ‘all-sky’ cameras. The brightness was estimated to be approximately 100 times brighter than a full moon.
Read more…

Filed under: Meteorites | 4 Comments »

A brilliant fireball seen over Ontario, Canada on September 25, 2009 was captured by seven all-sky cameras of the University of Western Ontario's Southern Ontario Meteor Network (SOMN.) The fireball was seen widely by observers throughout southern Ontario and adjacent areas. The fireball was first detected by Western's camera systems at an altitude of 100km, and moving southeastwards at 20.8 km/s. From the data collected, the researchers believe the meteoroid was initially about a meter wide, or about the size of a child's tricycle. At its brightest, the fireball was approximately 100 times as bright as the full moon.
Read more…

Filed under: Meteorites | 4 Comments »

The first asteroid to have been spotted before hitting Earth, 2008 TC3, crashed in northern Sudan one year ago on October 6. Several astronomers have been trying to piece together a profile of this asteroid, pulling together information from from meteorites found at the impact site and the images captured of the object in the hours before it crashed to Earth. “We have a gigantic jigsaw puzzle on our hands, from which we try to create a picture of the asteroid and its origins,” said SETI Institute astronomer Peter Jenniskens, who worked at the crash site, "and now we have with a composite sketch of the culprit, cleverly using the eyewitness accounts of astronomers that saw the asteroid sneak up on us.” Their description? 2008 TC3 looked like a loaf of walnut-raisin bread.
Read more…

Filed under: Asteroids, Meteorites | 5 Comments »

It's amazing what a rover can find laying by the side of the road. The Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity has found a rock that apparently is another meteorite. Less than three weeks ago, Opportunity drove away from a larger meteorite called "Block Island" that the rover examined for six weeks. Now, this new meteorite, dubbed "Shelter Island," is another fairly big rock, about 47 centimeters (18.8 inches) long, that fell from the skies. Block Island is about 60 centimeters (2 feet) across and was just 700 meters (about 2,300 feet) away from this latest meteorite find. At first look, the two meteorites look to be of a similar makeup; Opportunity found that Block Island was is made of nickel and iron.

This image was taken during Oppy's 2,022nd Martian day, or sol, (Oct. 1, 2009).

See below for a 3-D version of this image created by Stu Atkinson.
Read more…

Filed under: Mars, Meteorites | 24 Comments »

Archeologists have been divided about whether an extraterrestiral impact blasted North America about 12,900 years ago, wreaking havoc on Earth's surface and sending scores of species — including a pygmy mammoth and the horse — into oblivion.

New clues from California's Channel Islands should put any doubt to rest, says an international team of researchers.

Read more…

Filed under: Asteroids, Earth, Meteorites, Solar System | 5 Comments »

Maybe we're not as old as we think (or feel?). The interstellar stuff that was integrated into the planets and life on Earth has younger cosmic roots than theories predict, according to the University of Chicago scholar Philipp Heck and his international team of colleagues.

Heck's team analyzed 22 interstellar grains from the Murchison meteorite. Dying sun-like stars flung the Murchison grains into space more than 4.5 billion years ago, before the birth of the solar system. Scientists know the grains formed outside the solar system because of their exotic composition.
Read more…

Filed under: Meteorites | 3 Comments »

Classify this under news of the weird. A Russian scientist claims that aliens downed the Tunguska meteorite 101 years ago to protect our planet from devastation. Yuri Lavbin says he found unusual quartz crystals at the site of the massive Siberian explosion. Ten crystals have holes in them, placed so the stones can be united in a chain, and other have drawings on them. "We don’t have any technologies that can print such kind of drawings on crystals," said Lavbin. "We also found ferrum silicate that can not be produced anywhere, except in space.”

OK, just a few holes in this story, too.
Read more…

Filed under: Meteorites | 41 Comments »

A miniature meteorite unlike any other has been discovered in Antarctica. The tiny rock, known as MM40, is the first achondritic basaltic micrometeorite ever found on Earth. Detailed analysis shows it has an unusual chemical composition the researchers say raises questions about where it originated in the Solar System and how it was created. "We have basaltic meteorites that are thought to come from an asteroid called 4 Vesta and we also have basaltic meteorites from the Moon and Mars," said Dr. Caroline Smith, curator of meteorites at the Natural History Museum, London "But MM04's chemistry does not match any of those places. It has to be from somewhere else."

Read more…

Filed under: Meteorites | 22 Comments »