[meteorite-list] Meteor Crater Impactor?

Meteorites USA eric at meteoritesusa.com
Fri Sep 10 13:24:21 EDT 2010


I'm aware it "looks" more round from directly above crater. I 
purposefully captured the image from an angle to accentuate the 
elliptical shape of the bulges in the NW and SE corners of the crater.

The point being, it's NOT round.

Eric



On 9/10/2010 10:12 AM, Yinan Wang wrote:
> The mhcmagazine picture is seen from an angle in google earth. When
> you look at it directly overhead, it looks like this:
>
> http://maps.google.com/?ie=UTF8&ll=35.02599,-111.022038&spn=0.021402,0.045276&t=h&z=15
>
> Looks pretty round to me.
>
> As for the little crater to the SSW, definitely man made, but not sure
> for what use.
>
> -Yinan
>
> On Fri, Sep 10, 2010 at 4:59 AM, Meteorites USA<eric at meteoritesusa.com>  wrote:
>    
>> Hi Sterling, Thanks for the answer, and links.
>>
>> Still have a question though. I'm more curious about the angle of descent.
>> The paper mentions an angle of 45 degrees.
>>
>> This seems like a very "safe" guess. Are there any data, or information on
>> the angle of descent other than in the paper you provided a link to.
>>
>> See this crater photo from Google Earth:
>> http://www.mhcmagazine.com/images/crater.jpg
>>
>> The crater is not perfectly round as would be expected from an impactor
>> coming in at a sharper angle.In fact the crater is more elliptical in shape.
>> It appears as if the impactor hit at an angle quite a bit shallower than 45
>> degrees.
>>
>> Is it possible the impactor came in at a shallower angle?
>>
>> Regards,
>> Eric
>>
>>
>> On 9/10/2010 1:34 AM, Sterling K. Webb wrote:
>>      
>>> Eric, List,
>>>
>>> That is the conclusion of the 2005 paper in "Nature" by
>>> Melosh and Collins. Their computer models suggest it
>>> fragmented and came in as a swarm of pieces, much
>>> slowed by the atmosphere.
>>>
>>> Here's two popular articles:
>>>
>>> http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2005/03/0310_050310_meteorcrater.html
>>> and
>>> http://www.astronomy.com/asy/default.aspx?c=a&id=2965
>>>
>>> Here's original paper:
>>> http://amcg.ese.ic.ac.uk/~gsc/publications/articles/download/article7.pdf
>>>
>>> Well, one page from Nature, Vol. 434, 10 March, 2005.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Sterling K. Webb
>>>
>>> ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Meteorites USA"
>>> <eric at meteoritesusa.com>
>>> To: "Meteorite-list"<meteorite-list at meteoritecentral.com>
>>> Sent: Thursday, September 09, 2010 10:44 AM
>>> Subject: [meteorite-list] Meteor Crater Impactor?
>>>
>>>
>>>        
>>>> Hi List,
>>>>
>>>> Can someone tell me the proposed/accepted angle of descent of the
>>>> asteroid which formed Meteor Crater in AZ?
>>>>
>>>> Wikipedia has the impactor at 50 meters across, and velocity at 12.8
>>>> km/s. Is this accurate?
>>>>
>>>> Eric
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