[meteorite-list] Celestial Sleuths Track Historic Meteor Processionto South Atlantic

From: Richard Montgomery <rickmont_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Wed, 23 Jan 2013 17:03:55 -0800
Message-ID: <6EA2DB0FBCE8425383D6738B752C5541_at_bosoheadPC>

Why have I not ever heard of this before??

----- Original Message -----
From: "Ron Baalke" <baalke at zagami.jpl.nasa.gov>
To: "Meteorite Mailing List" <meteorite-list at meteoritecentral.com>
Sent: Wednesday, January 23, 2013 4:28 PM
Subject: [meteorite-list] Celestial Sleuths Track Historic Meteor
Processionto South Atlantic


>
> http://www.txstate.edu/news/news_releases/news_archive/2013/January-2013/Meteors012313.html
>
> Celestial sleuths track historic meteor procession to South Atlantic
> Posted by Jayme Blaschke
> Texas State University
> January 23, 2013
>
> A century ago, one of the most spectacular astronomical sights ever
> recorded lit up the skies when a grand procession of meteors blazed
> their way through the Earth's atmosphere. The event made headlines from
> Toronto to Pennsylvania and New York, and in the days that followed
> eyewitness reports poured in from as far away as Western Canada and
> Bermuda.
>
> Now, on the 100th anniversary of the historic event, astronomers Don
> Olson of Texas State University and Steve Hutcheon of the Astronomical
> Association of Queensland, Australia, have answered a long-forgotten
> call for more information from the pages of the science journal
> Nature, establishing a far greater range for the great fireball
> procession than previously known.
>
> Olson and Hutcheon publish their findings in the February 2013 issue of
> Sky & Telescope magazine, on newsstands now.
>
> A meteor procession occurs when an Earth-grazing meteor breaks up upon
> entering the atmosphere, creating multiple meteors traveling in nearly
> identical paths. Instead of plunging down through the atmosphere and
> burning up within a second or two, as often observed in normal meteor
> showers, the fireballs in meteor processions travel almost horizontally,
> nearly parallel to the Earth's surface. Each member of a meteor
> procession can remain visible to a single observer for about a minute,
> and the entire procession can take several minutes to pass by.
>
> On the evening of Feb. 9, 1913, the dazzling procession of meteors
> crossed over Canada and the Northeastern United States traveling
> northwest to southeast. University of Toronto astronomer Clarence A.
> Chant collected accounts from the astonished eyewitnesses and
> summarized, "To most observers the outstanding feature of the phenomenon
> was the slow, majestic motion of the bodies; and almost equally
> remarkable was the perfect formation which they retained." Hundreds of
> meteors were observed as far west as Saskatchewan, Canada, around 7 p.m.
> Mountain Time, and as far east as Bermuda at around 10 p.m. Atlantic
> Time, a distance of more than 2,400 miles. In the years that followed,
> additional reports from a town in Alberta, Canada, and a ship off the
> coast of Brazil extended the confirmed range of the meteor procession to
> more than 6,000 miles.
>
> Writing about the procession in Nature in 1916, William F. Denning
> observed that "Such an extended trajectory is without parallel in this
> branch of astronomy. Further reports from navigators in the South
> Atlantic Ocean might show that the observed flight was even greater."
> Later in 1916 Denning observed in the Journal of the Royal Astronomical
> Society of Canada that, according to the most distant ship sighting
> known to him, the meteors "were still going strongly - and may have
> pursued their luminous career far southwards over the South Atlantic
> Ocean, but navigators alone, during morning watches, can give us further
> information on the subject."
>
> Olson and Hutcheon responded to the call for observations nearly a
> century later. Sifting through a vast array of archival material, the
> team discovered seven ship reports, all previously unknown, extending
> the established track of the procession by an additional thousand miles.
>
> "We had the most wonderful help from U.K. and German archives. By the
> time they were finished, the German archivists had found six reports and
> the U.K. archivists had located one more," Olson said. "We have seven
> new accounts from ships' meteorological log books that extend the track
> farther than ever before. This is the most complete map for this
> phenomenon that's ever been compiled.
>
> "The track now goes more than 7,000 miles--that's more than a quarter of
> the way around the world," he said. "That's an almost unbelievable
> meteor event!"
>
> The search was complicated by several factors. One was that by the time
> the meteors crossed all the time zones from Western Canada to reach the
> ships in the South Atlantic, it was after midnight and therefore the
> relevant local date was Feb. 10. Additionally, the Earth continued to
> rotate beneath the meteor procession, effectively moving the track
> farther west than expected if it were a simple great circle arc. But
> after an extended search, the seven ships in the South Atlantic off the
> Brazilian coast turned up to provide valuable data reporting the event.
>
> "This is the most complete map ever drawn of the ground track of the
> procession. The known ground track is now more than 7,000 miles long,"
> Olson said. "The seven ship accounts are all newly-discovered for this
> article. The archivists helped us to find new information about one of
> the greatest meteor events."
>
> Unfortunately, the ultimate fate of the spectacular meteor procession
> will likely never be known.
>
> "They disappeared into the really obscure South Atlantic, outside of the
> well-traveled shipping lanes," Olson said. "We would like to locate more
> reports, but we've had no luck so far finding accounts from Brazil,
> islands in the South Atlantic, South Africa and Australia. But the
> procession was still going strong when seen by the last ship."
>
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Received on Wed 23 Jan 2013 08:03:55 PM PST