[meteorite-list] The Year in Falls 2013

From: Galactic Stone & Ironworks <meteoritemike_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Thu, 19 Dec 2013 19:15:44 -0500
Message-ID: <CAKBPJW8kttw3bfoNx=nHNKe1f075YTWOtxTYO-T6nhyrC5vUYQ_at_mail.gmail.com>

Seasons Greetings fellow Fall Watchers,

The year 2013 was a good one for witnessed falls.

We started out with our first fall in mid-January - the "Planeta Rica"
fall of January 15th in Colombia. It is assumed to be an ordinary
chondrite, judging from the reports. Do not expect to see this one on
the market or in the Bulletin any time soon.

Planeta Rica was scarcely noticed when the world was rocked by the
Chelyabinsk event.

To call Chelyabinsk an "event" is an understatement of cosmic
proportions. On February 15th, the world received a wake-up call that
illustrated how woefully unprepared we are for large-scale meteorite
impacts. Everyone reading this knows what happened and it put the
world of meteorites on every front page paper and television screen in
the world. Everybody was suddenly aware of meteorites and the
collector rush was on.

Chelyabinsk overshadowed many events this year, including the Wolcott
Connecticut fall of April 19th. Less than a week later, Germany was
gifted a rock from space in the form of the Braunschweig L6 meteorite
fall on April 23rd. Braunschweig and Chelyabinsk are the only
officially-approved falls of 2013 as of this writing.

On May 9th, there was the Oshika fall in Namibia and about a month
later on June 15th, we saw the Yuncheng-Shanxi fall in China. Both
falls are assumed to be ordinary chondrites and garnered little
attention during the media frenzy after Chelyabinsk.

Finally, on September 23rd, there was an ordinary chondrite fall in
Vicencia Brazil.

There have been a couple of promising fireballs after the Vicencia
fall, but nothing has been recovered from these fireballs yet. Unless
something turns up very soon, the year will end rather quiet for
falls, with nothing substantive since late September. But if history
is any indicator, we should see a fall soon after the New Year.

Jan 15, 2013 - "Planeta Rica" (unofficial) (ordinary chondrite?) : Colombia
Feb 15, 2013 - Chelyabinsk - (LL5 chondrite) : Russia (Hammer)
Apr 19, 2013 - "Wolcott" (unofficial) (ordinary chondrite?) :
Connecticut USA (Hammer)
Apr 23, 2013 - Braunschweig (L6 chondrite) : Germany (Hammer)
May 09, 2013 - "Oshika" (unofficial) (ordinary chondrite?) : Namibia
Jun 15, 2013 - "Yuncheng-Shanxi" (unofficial) (ordinary chondrite?) : China
Sep 23, 2013 - "Vicencia" (unofficial) (ordinary chondrite?) : Brazil

All known falls since the year 2000 - http://www.galactic-stone.com/pages/falls

Best regards, Happy Holidays, and Happy Huntings,

MikeG

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Received on Thu 19 Dec 2013 07:15:44 PM PST