[meteorite-list] Fireball Seen in Canada, Michigan

[E.P. Grondine]

Maybe we won't be getting any offers from Chicago
Steve in our e-mail for the next few dqys -

Ed 

--- Ron Baalke <baalke at zagami.jpl.nasa.gov> wrote:

> 
> http://www.thestar.com/News/article/190985
> 
> 'Falling star' frightens Earthlings
> Christian Cotroneo
> Toronto Star
> March 12, 2007
> 
> Cynthia Crowther had just lit a cigarette outside
> her Newmarket home
> when the sky suddenly caught fire.
> 
> "Oh my God, I think I just saw a plane crash," she
> declared to her
> husband, running inside.
> 
> A ball of light, seething white, had careered
> overhead, spitting out
> dazzling debris.
> 
> She called police, the government, airport
> authorities.
> 
> Russell Crowther, seeing his wife so frantic,
> imagined something even worse.
> 
> "I thought it was a nuclear warhead," he recalls. "I
> was just squinting,
> waiting for us to evaporate."
> 
> At about the same time that Newmarket seemed
> scheduled for heavenly
> demolition, Scott Sweeney was driving home from his
> parents' house,
> along Wisconsin's stretch of Interstate 94. He was
> heading towards
> Milwaukee, along a four-lane highway flanked by
> fields and trees, when,
> "something just caught my eye . . . it was going
> straight down."
> 
> Indeed, the whitish-green fireball seemed to be on
> such a dramatic
> collision course with Earth that from his vantage,
> the 35-year-old IT
> technician imagined two grim scenarios: a mighty
> cannonball into Lake
> Michigan. Or Milwaukee itself was due for a
> celestial smackdown.
> 
> "I honestly waited to see something come up from the
> ground."
> 
> But what actually fell from the sky on Sunday night,
> visible between 8
> and 8:30 p.m. to rapt observers from southern
> Ontario to Milwaukee,
> Wis., was likely a rock, no bigger than a fist and
> weighing about a
> kilogram.
> 
> "Everything I have heard suggests that it was a
> bolide - a meteorite
> that was flaming though our atmosphere," explained
> Paul Delaney, a
> physics and astronomy professor at York University.
> "It probably came to
> ground somewhere. But where, nobody knows."
> 
> It is certain, however, that for three of four
> spine-tingling seconds,
> people from a massive swathe of the continent shared
> the same slice of
> burning sky. And everyone imagined that whatever it
> was had landed in
> their own backyard.
> 
> "That is not at all unusual for a really bright
> bolide," Delaney
> observed. "They have huge distances over which they
> can travel and,
> therefore, be seen. Especially if it's in the
> twilight or darkness hours.
> 
> "For all you know, it's up10 kilometres. That means
> its travel distance
> can be huge."
> 
> 50 km? 500 km?
> 
> "It could be 5,000 km, mate."
> 
> But a hurtling meteoroid glows white hot as it
> rushes through the
> earth's atmosphere and, like waving a red hot stick
> around at a
> campfire, it leaves a brief but extremely bright
> trail. "So it doesn't
> have to be very big to be seemingly really bright,"
> Delaney said.
> 
> NORAD certainly didn't flinch.
> 
> Charged with monitoring the skies across the
> continent, the North
> American Aerospace Defense Command uses a battery of
> radar, satellites
> and aircraft to cast its net.
> 
> "We're pretty vigilant in terms of monitoring the
> skies," said Major
> Jason Proulx, a NORAD public affairs officer. "But
> what we do is we
> assess whether it poses a risk or a threat. If it
> doesn't pose a threat,
> it's not something we wouldn't express further
> interest in."
> 
> It was dramatic enough for television stations in
> Wisconsin to take a
> break from unsolved cow murders and assure residents
> that it was not a UFO.
> 
> Closer to home, a radio report suggested the flaming
> fury landed in
> Nobleton, although the local fire department found
> no debris. And police
> switchboards in Toronto, York and Durham Regions
> reported receiving
> several calls from people who observed the fireball.
> 
> If anyone does manage to find this heavenly visitor,
> the earthly rewards
> could be substantial. Museums, such as the Royal
> Ontario Museum, could
> pay as much as $3,000 for a meteoroid of that size,
> Delaney estimated.
> 
> "There will be a flood of, `Oh, it's mine.' Because
> these things are
> worth a lot of money. Meteorites are big business."
> 
> After all, imagine how much we can learn from a bolt
> that falls from the
> heavenly machinery.
> 
> "These are wonderful laboratories," Delaney says.
> "It's a piece of space.
> 
> "Some of the rocks that come to ground are literally
> leftover pieces
> from the solar system's formation. All of a sudden,
> we step back in time
> four and a half billion years ago, to the way the
> solar system was at
> that moment in time.
> 
> "That gives us a real good base point to tell us
> about what was the
> material composition of our region of space when our
> solar system formed."
> 
> Could this rare hint from the heavens be stuck in
> some Uxbridge heifer's
> hindquarters?
> 
> "Of course, if it hit that cow, the cow is going to
> be lying there
> dead," Delaney notes. "So the farmer will be a
> little ticked."
> 
> In fact, Delaney knows of only two reported personal
> impacts over the
> last 400 to 500 years. None in Canada. Of the
> thousands of meteorites
> raining on earth every year, most plunk into the
> oceans covering most of
> the globe.
> 
> Ambitious meteorite hunters may want to head to
> Antarctica, where humans
> are sparse and meteorites are relatively easy to
> find.
> 
> "The stuff hits the ice, the ice melts and then they
> just sit there on
> the ground, waiting for us to go pick them up,"
> Delaney says.
> 
> Closer to Toronto, on the other hand, a meteorite
> would look like just
> about any other rock.
> 
> Hence, a farmer ploughs over it. Or a road is built.
> Bye-bye mystery of
> the universe.
> 
> "Unless somebody saw it hit," Delaney says. "The
> chances of us findingit
> are really slim, unfortunately."
> 
>
-------------------------------------------------------------------
> 
> Sighting triggers calls
> mlive.com (Michigan)
> March 12, 2007
> 
> WEST MICHIGAN -- A meteor streaking across the night
> sky on Sunday 
> prompted numerous calls to police dispatchers in
> several counties. 
> "It was probably really bright, if it drew that much
> attention," said 
> Dave DeBruyn, director of Roger B. Chaffee
> Planetarium in Grand Rapids. 
> He said a meteor is the best explanation for the
> fiery streak many 
> people reported at 8 p.m. Meteor-sightings happen
> occasionally, he said, 
> and involve a rock typically rich in iron and nickel
> that disintegrates 
> in the atmosphere as it falls. "It's kind of like a
> giant sparkler," he 
> said.
> 
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