[meteorite-list] Russian: A preliminary reconstruction of the orbit of the Chelyabinsk Meteoroid byJorge I. Zuluaga & Ignacio Ferrin

Robin Whittle rw at firstpr.com.au
Fri Feb 22 23:08:14 EST 2013


The researchers:

>   http://arxiv.org/abs/1302.5377
> 
>   A preliminary reconstruction of the orbit of the Chelyabinsk
>   Meteoroid
>   Jorge I. Zuluaga, Ignacio Ferrin
>   Instituto de F´ısica - FCEN, Universidad de Antioquia,
>   Calle 67 No. 53-108, Medellın, Colombia

Did not know the precise location of the Korkino marketplace video:

  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=odKjwrjIM-k

and they based their range of trajectories on a rough estimate of
vertical elevation from the Korkino area.  I wrote to them referring to
parts of Stefan Geens' page:


http://ogleearth.com/2013/02/reconstructing-the-chelyabinsk-meteors-path-with-google-earth-youtube-and-high-school-math/#comment-7594

where the marketplace is identifies.  Further comments:

 http://ogleearth.com/2013/02/reconstructing-the-chelyabinsk-meteors-path-with-google-earth-youtube-and-high-school-math/#comment-7584

enable us to locate roughly which lane of the market place the camera
was located.  It doesn't really matter which lane it was - the important
thing is to know the angle of the lanes with respect to east-west.

Maybe they will be able to narrow down their estimation for this middle
part of the path.  They used Lake Cherbarkul as the other reference
point, however, this is after the fragments have slowed their horizontal
movement and been more affected by gravity, so it would not be correct
to assume a straight line trajectory from the approximately above
Korkino area at a given altitude, determined by Stefan Geens' (or the
authors') triangulation from the Revolution Square video.

Perhaps a better straight line approximation could be found by using the
meteorite fall location which is most to the west.  That object would
presumably have been traveling faster and so be less affected by gravity
than those which fell more to the east.

I pointed them to the video of the rapid slowing of the multiple objects
after the main conflagration:

   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gQ6Pa5Pv_io

      I suggest switching to full-screen and starting the player at
      4:30.

   http://postimage.org/image/zdzm79g95/

and I mentioned this mailing list.  I will write to them again with the
above and suggest they might like to join this list and ask for guidance
on how to estimate the slowing of the objects and therefore the bending
of the trajectory before it reaches ground.

Is there any consensus on the most westerly location where fragments
came to Earth?

  - Robin





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