[meteorite-list] Meteor Likely Exploded Near Colorado

From: Ron Baalke <baalke_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Thu Apr 22 09:53:32 2004
Message-ID: <200212031831.KAA16004_at_zagami.jpl.nasa.gov>

http://www.insidedenver.com/drmn/state/article/0,1299,DRMN_21_1583858,00.html

Meteor likely exploded near Gunnison
By Jim Erickson
Rocky Mountain News
December 3, 2002

The dazzling Thanksgiving night fireball witnessed by hundreds of Coloradans
probably exploded over a remote, mountainous region between Gunnison and
Crested Butte, a meteorite researcher said Monday.

Witnesses said the fireball appeared at 6:20 p.m. and illuminated entire mountain
ranges.

It lingered for seven or eight seconds and was followed by a series of sonic booms,
said physicist Chris L. Peterson, a member of the Denver Museum of Nature &
Science's meteorite investigation team.

Peterson, owner and operator of the Cloudbait Observatory west of Colorado
Springs, is analyzing more than 260 witness reports posted at his Web site:
www.cloudbait.com.

Those accounts suggest that the fireball exploded 10 to 20 miles above the ground,
somewhere between Gunnison and Crested Butte.

Some debris may have pelted the earth, Peterson said.

Members of the meteorite investigation team also are reviewing videotape from
some of the 10 "all-sky cameras" that the museum recently installed at schools
throughout Colorado.

In addition, museum researchers are trying to acquire videotape from private
security cameras that apparently captured the event.

Video images of the fireball would help researchers narrow their search for the
explosion site and determine if the space rock came from the main asteroid belt
between Mars and Jupiter.

Based on the fireball's brightness and duration, Peterson suspects that the rock
weighed 1,000 to 2,000 pounds before it entered the atmosphere and blew apart.

It probably was about the size of a filing cabinet, bigger than the usual
basketball-size variety, he said.
Received on Tue 03 Dec 2002 01:31:03 PM PST