[meteorite-list] In search of meteorites

From: Darren Garrison <cynapse_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Wed Oct 11 00:53:51 2006
Message-ID: <l2uoi2p6ppvrp7qea4773g1kvj1rjg8mg3_at_4ax.com>

http://www.gazette.com/display.php?id=1322489&secid=1

October 10, 2006

In search of meteorites


By BILL HETHCOCK THE GAZETTE

Imagine searching for marble-size rocks in a 50-mile strip between Penrose and
Ellicott.

That?s essentially what meteorite hunter and collector Robert Ward was doing
Tuesday.

One of the brightest meteors reported in recent years slow-danced across
Arizona, New Mexico and Colorado the night of Oct. 1, possibly dropping
meteorites toward the tail end of its trip.

Ward said he has chased fireballs worldwide for 20 years, and this is the most
impressive.

?This one traveled amazingly far, amazingly low, and amazingly slowly,? he said.
?It was a very big, very bright fireball seen by a lot of people.?

Jeff and Pam Holmberg are two of those people.

The husband and wife were watching television in their house north of Westcliffe
when Jeff looked out the window and saw the fireball soar over the Sangre de
Cristo mountain range.

Pam was dozing off after a full day of football watching.

?I started hootin? and hollerin? and she came out of the chair like a shot,?
Jeff Holmberg said.

He and his wife ran outside in time to see the main fireball break into three or
four pieces. Jeff Holmberg scrambled up a ladder to the roof and watched the
meteor pieces disappear into the northeast horizon toward Colorado Springs.

?It was a big, bright light with a smoke trail behind it,? he said. ?It looked
like the landing light on a big jet.?

The Holmbergs estimated the fireball took 20 seconds to pass from horizon to
horizon.

?I was just incredible how close it seemed,? Pam Holmberg said. ?It was floating
across, so bright, it seemed like you could just reach out and touch it.?

Eyewitnesses and cameras that capture the whole sky in Colorado, New Mexico and
Arizona caught the fireball at 11:16 p.m on Oct. 1, said Chris Peterson, an
astronomer and a researcher at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science.

Witnesses also reported hearing the sonic boom, a sound similar to thunder. The
sonic boom is heard several minutes after the fireball is seen because it takes
the sound that long to travel to earth from more than 20 miles in the air,
Peterson said.

The fireball traveled generally southwest to northeast, beginning northeast of
Phoenix, cutting across northwest New Mexico and ending east of Colorado
Springs.

It was captured by sky cameras at the Guffey School and at Cloudbait Observatory
north of Guffey, which Peterson runs, as well as by sky cameras in New Mexico.

Camera data suggests the full flight lasted at least 45 seconds ? an eternity
for a meteor, Peterson said.

?It was very, very long,? he said. ?It was going about as slow as a meteor gets.
To see a meteor that goes on for more than half a minute is remarkable.?

Witnesses and cameras show the meteor breaking into multiple pieces in a long
train extending at least 70 miles from southern Colorado to Colorado Springs,
Peterson said. He described the breakup pattern as ?extremely unusual.? Usually
meteors fade out, but videos show this one split into a long string of
individual fireballs, Peterson said.

Meteorites may have dropped over the central San Luis Valley, in the Sangre de
Cristo mountains, across the Wet Mountain Valley and continuing to Ellicott, 20
miles east of Colorado Springs.

Ward, who is from Arizona, is focusing his hunt for space rocks between between
Penrose and Ellicott.

He started by talking to people at fire stations, gas stations and convenience
stores and asking if anyone had seen or heard anything unusual.

Ward found Jeff Holmberg at the Wet Mountain Fire Protection District, where
Homberg volunteers. Holmberg had told his skeptical fellow firefighters about
what he?d seen.

?The boys at the fire station just kind of grinned and shook their heads and
asked me about aliens and stuff,? he said.

A couple of days later, Ward walked in and asked if anyone had seen a possible
meteor. Holmberg invited Ward to his house for breakfast and told him his story
over biscuits and gravy.

The men climbed on Holmberg?s roof. Ward took compass readings and gathered
other information he?ll use to estimate the fireball?s flight path.

Meteorites are typically black, unusual-looking rocks with rounded surfaces,
Ward said. They?re usually heavier than other rocks the same size and 90 percent
are magnetic.

He finds about 80 meteorites a year, some of them hundreds of years old. It?s
rare and more scientifically significant to find meteorites that have just
fallen.

?This was in space a week ago,? Ward said. ?It?s extremely fresh. It?s important
to get it into a lab as soon as possible so it can be analyzed.?

While Ward concentrates on where meteorites might have ended up, Peterson is
more interested in where the space rocks came from.

With good reports from several locations, scientists can estimate the orbit of
the meteor before it entered Earth?s atmosphere. Then, if meteorites are found,
they can be tested to provide scientifically valuable information about the
parent body, Peterson said.

They can also be valuable to dealers and collectors, who base their worth on
factors such as where the meteorite is from and whether there were witnesses to
the meteor fall.

A witnessed, fresh fall that turns out to be from the moon or Mars might be
worth more than $1 million. Other meteorites have little monetary value.

CONTACT THE WRITER: 636-0232 or hethcock_at_gazette.com
Received on Wed 11 Oct 2006 12:53:44 AM PDT