Meteor/Meteorite News 16DEC2010

Geminid meteor shower gets rave reviews as best of 2010 Christian Science Monitor Skywatchers around the globe sang praises to the Geminid meteor shower, the annual mid-December rain of meteors passing through the earth's atmosphere. ... Antarctic science wrap-up: ANSMET hunting for meteorites again ExplorersWeb (By Correne Coetzer) This Antarctic season ANSMET has two field teams with separate goals hunting for meteorites; a smaller, more mobile team dedicated to ...

ANSMET: “The various possible targets of the ANSMET recon team for 2010-2011. A pre-season flight along the path shown, established the priority for visits to each ice field.”
courtesy ANSMET 2010-11 (live over Contact 5), http://www.humanedgetech.com/expedition/ansmet1011 and ExplorersWeb

elp allsky: Meteor News...Awesome Geminids Video From North Texas ...
By elp allsky
This video is compiled from individual captures during the overnight peak of the Geminid Meteor Shower Dec. 13th and 14th, 2010. The camera has an approximate field of view of 40 degrees and points North toward Oklahoma City, ...


Meteor report plus a Hubble bauble | Portal to the Universe
By Astro Bob
These were the words uttered by meteor watchers in the Duluth area last night. Despite a great forecast for Geminid watching, the sky turned mostly cloudy after 9 p.m. I was grateful for about 45 minutes of partly cloudy sky between 11 ...


Cosmic Log: It's a hot night for cool meteors
msnbc.com
A Geminid meteor streaks across the night sky, with circular star trails whirling the background, in a time-exposure photo made by astronomer Jimmy Westlake ...

Life`s buildings blocks in "impossible" place, plus a whalloping meteorite tale EarthSky Wed, 15 Dec 2010 16:10 PM PST Amino acids  critical to life, the building blocks of proteins â are present in an amazing meteorite from space that apparently suffered a violent collision with another asteroid in space, before crashing to Earth in 2008. Fragments of the meteorite  called 2008 TC3  are collectively called Almahata Sitta or Station Six after the [...] Life's Building Blocks Found on Surprising Meteorite SPACE.com via Yahoo! News Wed, 15 Dec 2010 15:15 PM PST Scientists have discovered amino acids, the building blocks of life in a meteorite where none were expected. Meteorite just one piece of an unknown celestial body Science Daily Wed, 15 Dec 2010 13:21 PM PST Scientists from all over the world are taking a second, more expansive, look at the car-sized asteroid that exploded over Sudan's Nubian Desert in 2008, with major implications for the meteorite's origin. In the first round of research, scientists examined one fragment of the asteroid and determined that it fell into a very rare category called ureilites. Now they have expanded the scope of the ... Meteorite just one piece of an unknown celestial body EurekAlert (press release) Initial research was focused on classifying the meteorite fragments that were collected two to five months after they were strewn across the desert and ... Meteorite streaks through sky in Knoxville WATE 6 Knoxville Wed, 15 Dec 2010 08:34 AM PST Thanks to a meteor cycle, Knoxville residents and even a 6 News crew saw a likely meteorite streak through the sky Wednesday morning.

Meteorite News 31MAR09

Team Finds Riches in Meteorite Treasure Hunt
(PhysOrg.com) -- Just before dawn on Oct. 7, 2008, an SUV-sized asteroid entered Earth's atmosphere and exploded harmlessly over the Nubian Desert of northern Sudan. Scientists expected the asteroid, called 2008 TC3, had blown to dust in the resulting high-altitude fireball.PhysOrg - 2 hours, 59 minutes ago

Fireball streaks over Alberta, Saskatchewan
Roland Dechesne had just left his acreage home south of Calgary on Tuesday morning, when he spotted something unusual in the sky.Daily Herald - Mar 31 2:42 PM

Fireball leaves 'great glow' in Alberta sky
Some early risers in Alberta got a glimpse of a fireball streaking across the sky Tuesday morning.CBC via Yahoo! Canada News - Mar 31 12:46 PM

Residents in Alberta and Saskatchewan spot brilliant fireball in morning sky
CALGARY - People in Alberta and Saskatchewan spotted a brilliant green fireball streak across the sky early Tuesday morning.The Canadian Press via Yahoo! Canada News - Mar 31 11:32 AM

2008 TC3, Almahata Sitta meteorite came from F-class asteroid 26MAR09

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=asteroid-meteorite-sudan-fireball

Rock Science: First Meteorites Recovered on Earth from an Asteroid Tracked in Space Fragments in the Sudanese desert make up an "asteroid trifecta":
discovery, prediction and recovery By John Matson Scientific American March 25, 2009

Last October, asteroid monitors at the Catalina Sky Survey at the University of Arizona in Tucson picked up a small object on an immediate collision course with Earth. The asteroid was too small to present a real threat - just a few meters across, it stood little chance of penetrating the atmosphere intact. Indeed, it exploded in astratospheric fireball over northern Sudan less than 24 hours later - anevent witnessed by people on the ground as well as the pilots of a KLM airliner- conforming well to astronomer's predictions for its trajectory. But the asteroid, dubbed 2008 TC3, was nonetheless a momentous discovery: Among the countless small objects that strike Earth's atmosphere every year, none had ever been detected and tracked before it impacted. Now the Sudan bolide has yielded yet another first:

Researchers report in Nature today
<http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v458/n7237/full/nature07920.html>that they have recovered 47 meteorites from the object in the Nubian Desert. And lead author Peter Jenniskens, a meteor astronomer at the SETI Institute in Mountain View, Calif., says that another search completed earlier this month, after the paper was submitted, has upped the meteorite count to about 280.
Astronomer Donald Yeomans, manager of NASA's Near-Earth Object Programoffice <http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/> at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory inPasadena, Calif., calls 2008 TC3 "a perfect asteroid trifecta,"referring to "pre-impact discovery, successful impact prediction, and successful sample return." (Yeomans did not contribute to the recovery research, but his office played a leading role in tracking the asteroid's entry <http://www.cfa.harvard.edu/mpec/K08/K08T50.html>.)

The find allows astronomers to connect the chemical composition of the meteorite to its orbit and reflectance in the sky during tracking. "The holy grail of asteroid science is to uniquely link a specific meteorite and its detailed composition to a specific asteroid type," Yeomans says."And that has now been done without an expensive sample-return mission. "This object, which the study's authors call Almahata Sitta (Arabic for Station Six, a train station in the desert where eyewitnesses saw the fireball and that served as the researchers' base camp), appears to belong to a rare class of bodies called F-class asteroids, which constitute just 1.3 percent of all asteroids. Chemically speaking, Almahata Sitta is a meteorite whose specific composition is unique among meteorite collections. It is a fragile, porous ureilite (a relatively rare kind of olivine- and pyroxene-bearing meteorite)containing graphite and nanodiamonds, among other materials. Its fragility, Jenniskens says, helps explain why it broke apart so high in the atmosphere. With the benefit of the object's rarity as an F-class body and its orbit, tracked backward through time, the researchers established a possible link to a larger F-class asteroid, the 1.6-mile-(2.6-kilometer-) diameter 1998 KU2, which may have originated from the same parent body as Almahata Sitta."The orbit of the asteroid, by just tracking it for 20 hours, is 10,000times better than anything you can get from just observing a fireball Jenniskens says. "What's neat about this is that the big asteroid allows you to extend back in time the evolutionary history." He notes that scientists might be able to pinpoint the specific region of the asteroid belt that 2008 TC3 came from with more F-class asteroids from the same parent body. Even the brief amount of time 2008 TC3 was tracked provided an excellent lead on where to look- and the desert surface provided an ideal surface for turning up the dark fragments. "The entry trajectory was very precisely known," Jenniskens says. The first samples were found in early December by a 45-person search team from the University of Khartoum. (Three scientists from that university and one from the University of Juba in Sudan are among the co-authors of the study.) "We had many eyes and hands," Jenniskens says, trying "to find these."

2008 TC3 classified as a Ureilite 26MAR09

Carnegie Institution of WashingtonWashington, D.C.
Contact:Douglas Rumble, 202-478-8990
March 25, 2009

Asteroid Impact Helps Trace Meteorite Origins

The car-sized asteroid that exploded above the Nubian Desert last October was small compared to the dinosaur-killing, civilization-ending objects that still orbit the sun. But that didn't stop it from having a huge impact among scientists. This was the first instance of an asteroid spotted in space before falling to Earth. Researchers rushed to collect the resulting meteorite debris, and a new paper in Nature reports on this first-ever opportunity to calibrate telescopic observations of a known asteroid with laboratory analyses of its fragments."Any number of meteorites have been observed as fireballs and smoking meteor trails as they come through the atmosphere," says Douglas Rumble of the Carnegie Institution's Geophysical Laboratory, a co-author of the paper."It's been happening for years. But to actually see this object before it gets to the Earth's atmosphere and then to follow it in -- that's the unique thing."The chemical compositions of asteroids can be studied from Earth by analyzing the spectra of sunlight reflected from their surfaces. This provides enough information to divide asteroids into broad categories, butdoes not yield detailed information on their compositions. On the otherhand, meteorites recovered on Earth can be analyzed directly for chemical composition, but researchers generally have no direct information on what type of asteroid they came from.The asteroid, known as 2008 TC3, was first sighted October 6, 2008, by telescopes of the automated Catalina Sky Survey near Tucson Arizona. Numerous observatories followed its trajectory and took spectrographic measurements before it disappeared into the Earth's shadow the following day. A recovery team led by Peter Jenniskens of the SETI Institute in California and Muawia Shaddad of the University of Khartoum then searched for meteorites along the projected approach path in northern Sudan. They recovered 47 fragments, one of which was selected for preliminary analysisby laboratories, including the Carnegie Institution's Geophysical Laboratory."This asteroid was made of a particularly fragile material that caused it to explode at a high 37 kilometer altitude, before it was significantly slowed down, so that the few surviving fragments scattered over a large area,"explains Jenniskens, the lead author of the Nature paper. "The recovered meteorites were unlike anything in our meteorite collections up to that point."Carnegie's Andrew Steele studied the meteorite's carbon content, which showed signs that at some point in its past the meteorite had been subjected to very high temperatures. "Without a doubt, of all the meteorites that we've ever studied, the carbon in this one has been cooked to the greatest extent," says Steele. "Very cooked, graphite-like carbon is the main constituent of the carbon in this meteorite." Another form of carbon Steele found in the meteorite, nanodiamonds, may give clues as to whether the heating was caused by impacts on the parent asteroid, or by some other process. Oxygen isotopes in the meteorite give other information about its parent body. Each source of meteorites in the solar system, including planets such as Mars, has a distinctive signature of the three isotopes 16O, 17O, and18O. This signature can be recognized even when other variables, such as chemical composition or rock type, differ. "Oxygen isotopes represent the single most decisive measurement in determining the parental or family groupings of meteorites," says Rumble who performed the analysis. According to Rumble's analysis, 2008 TC3 falls into a category of very rare meteorites called ureilites, all of which may have originally come from the same parent body. "Where that is, we don't know," says Rumble. But because astronomers took spectral measurements of 2008 TC3 before it hit the Earth,and can compare those measurements with the laboratory analyses, scientists will be better able to recognize ureilite asteroids in space. One known asteroid with a similar spectrum, the 2.6 kilometer-sized asteroid 1998 KU2, has already been identified by researchers as a possible source for 2008 TC3. Rumble's work was funded by NASA Cosmochemistry grant NNX07AI48G. Steele was supported by NASA's Sample Return Laboratory Instruments and Data Analysis Program (SRLIDAP) , NASA's Astrobiology Science and Technology for Exploring Planets (ASTEP) program , and the NASA Astrobiology Institute (NAI).

IMAGE CAPTION:[http://www.ciw.edu/sites/www.ciw.edu/files/news/PRRumbleSteeleAsteroid-ImageAMedforWeb.jpg(31KB)]

This fragment of Asteroid 2008 TC3 provided scientists with the first-ever opportunity to calibrate telescopic observations of a known asteroid with laboratory analyses.

2008 TC3 Asteroid monitored from outer space to ground 26MAR09

Public Affairs

Sandia National Laboratories

Media contact: Neal Singer, (505) 845-7078

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: March 25, 2009

We saw it coming:

Asteroid monitored from outer space to ground impact

Sandians Mark Boslough and Dick Spalding watch it in real time

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. -- Reports by scientists of meteorites striking Earth in the past have resembled police reports of so many muggings -- the offenders came out of nowhere and then disappeared into the crowd, making it difficultto get more than very basic facts.Now an international research team has been able to identify an asteroid inspace before it entered Earth's atmosphere, enabling computers to determineits area of origin in the solar system as well as predict the arrival timeand location on Earth of its shattered surviving parts."I would say that this work demonstrates, for the first time, the ability ofastronomers to discover and predict the impact of a space object," saysSandia National Laboratories researcher Mark Boslough, a member of theresearch team.Perhaps more importantly, the event tested the ability of society to respond very quickly to a predicted impact, says Boslough. "In this case, it was never a threat, so the response was scientific. Had it been deemed a threat-- a larger asteroid that would explode over a populated area -- an alert could have been issued in time that could potentially save lives by evacuating the danger zone or instructing people to take cover. "The profusion of information in this case also helps meteoriticists learn the orbits of parent bodies that yield various types of meteorites.Such knowledge could help future space missions explore or even mine the asteroids in Earth-crossing orbits, Boslough says.The four-meter-diameter asteroid, called 2008 TC3, was initially sighted by the automated Catalina Sky Survey telescope at Mount Lemmon, Ariz., on Oct.6. Numerous observatories, alerted to the invader, then imaged the object. Computations correctly predicted impact would occur 19 hours after discovery in the Nubian Desert of northern Sudan. According to NASA's Near Earth Object program, "A spectacular fireball litup the predawn sky above Northern Sudan on October 7, 2008."A wide variety of analyses were performed while the asteroid was en route and after its surviving pieces were located by meteorite hunters in an intense search.

Researchers, listed in the paper describing this work in the March 26 issueof the journal Nature, range from the SETI Institute, the University of Khartoum, Juba University (Sudan), Sandia, Caltech, NASA Johnson Space Center and NASA Ames, to other universities in the U.S., Canada, Ireland,England, Czech Republic and the Netherlands. Sandia researcher Dick Spalding interpreted recorded data about the atmospheric fireball, and Boslough estimated the aerodynamic pressure and strength of the asteroid based on the estimated burst altitude of 36 kilometers. Searchers have recovered 47 meteorites so far -- offshoots from the disintegrating asteroid, mostly immolated by its encounter with atmospheric friction -- with a total mass of 3.95 kilograms.The analyzed material showed carbon-rich materials not yet represented in meteorite collections, indicating that fragile materials still unknown may account for some asteroid classes. Such meteorites are less likely to survive due to destruction upon entry and weathering once they land on Earth's surface."Chunks of iron and hard rock last longer and are easier to find than clumps of soft carbonaceous materials," says Boslough."We knew that locating an incoming object while still in space could be done, but it had never actually been demonstrated until now," says Boslough."In this post-rational age where scientific explanations and computer models are often derided as 'only theories,' it is nice to have a demonstration like this."Sandia is a multiprogram laboratory operated by Sandia Corporation, a Lockheed Martin company, for the U.S. Department of Energy's National Nuclear Security Administration. With main facilities in Albuquerque, N.M.,and Livermore, Calif., Sandia has major R&D responsibilities in national security, energy and environmental technologies, and economic competitiveness.

IMAGE CAPTIONS:[Image 1:

http://www.sandia.gov/news/resources/releases/2009/images/asteroid_boslough.jpg(4.7MB)]

Don't look back -- it may be gaining on you: Sandia's Mark Boslough discusses aspects of asteroids (Photo by Randy Montoya)

[Image 2:

http://www.sandia.gov/news/resources/releases/2009/images/asteroid_spalding.jpg(1.5MB)]

Dick Spalding examines the night sky (Photo by Randy Montoya)

Meteorite News 26MAR09

Scientists Catch Shooting Star For First Time
CBS 2 Los Angeles Thu, 26 Mar 2009 12:16 PM PDT
For the first time scientists matched a meteorite found on Earth with a specific asteroid that became a fireball plunging through the sky. It gives them a glimpse into the past when planets formed and an idea how to avoid a future asteroid Armageddon.

Astronomers catch a shooting star
The Times of India Thu, 26 Mar 2009 11:47 AM PDT
WASHINGTON: For the first time, US scientists matched a meteorite found on Earth with a specific asteroid that became a fireball plunging through the sky. It gives them a glimpse into the past when planets formed and an idea how to avoid a future asteroid Armageddon.

How Did They Catch a Shooting Star?
ABC News Thu, 26 Mar 2009 09:21 AM PDT
Astronomers matched a shooting star with a meteorite found on Earth.

Meteorite matches with asteroid
News 24 South Africa Thu, 26 Mar 2009 09:18 AM PDT
For the first time US scientists have matched a meteorite found on Earth with a specific asteroid that became a fireball plunging through the sky.

Scientists Track Down Fallen Star Treasure
TechNewsWorld.com Thu, 26 Mar 2009 09:12 AM PDT
For the first time, scientists matched a meteorite found on Earth with a specific asteroid that became a fireball plunging through the sky. It gives them a glimpse into the past when planets formed and an idea how to avoid a future asteroid Armageddon. Last October, astronomers tracked a small nonthreatening asteroid heading toward Earth before it became a "shooting star."

Jesus Christ's face appears on broken meteorite
Pravda Ru Thu, 26 Mar 2009 06:14 AM PDT
Russian scientists noticed the image of Jesus Christ on the meteorite which fell down on the Earth about 100 years ago. The image is identical to the one that appears on the Shroud of Turin.

Meteorite found in Sudan
The Sarasota Herald-Tribune Thu, 26 Mar 2009 04:17 AM PDT
For the first time, scientists have matched a meteorite found on Earth with a specific asteroid that became a fireball plunging through the sky. It gives them a glimpse into the past when planets formed.

Scientists trace meteorite origins
Spacetoday.net Thu, 26 Mar 2009 02:36 AM PDT
Planetary scientists have for the first time linked an asteroid observed before it entered the...

Asteroid's past can help plan future
Seattle Times Thu, 26 Mar 2009 02:13 AM PDT
For the first time scientists matched a meteorite found on Earth with a specific asteroid that became a fireball plunging through the sky...

First Tracked Rock Recovered in Sudan (Asteroid 2008 TC3) 21FEB09

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn16635-first-tracked-space-rock-recovered-after-impact
First tracked space rock recovered after impact-0246 GMT on 7 October-Sudan (Asteroid 2008 TC3)
by David Shiga
New Scientist
February 19, 2009
The discovery of meteorites from an asteroid that exploded over Sudan in October completes an astronomical trifecta. For the first time, scientists have detected a space rock ahead of a collision with Earth, watched it streak through the atmosphere, and then recovered pieces of it. Analysis of the meteorites could shed light on conditions in the early solar system more than 4 billion years ago. When the asteroid, called 2008 TC3, was discovered on 6 October last year, it was just 20 hours away from hitting Earth. Though the warning period was short, it was the first time a space rock had been found before it impacted the planet. Orbital calculations predicted the object would plunge into the atmosphere above Sudan at 0246 GMT on 7 October, and it arrived right ontime. Observations suggested it was no more than 5 metres across, too small to survive intact all the way to the ground and cause damage. The brilliant fireball it made as it descended through the atmosphere was seen far in the distance by the crew of a KLM airliner, and was observed by various satellites, including a weather satellite called Meteosat-8. Now, a team of meteorite hunters has found fragments of the object. The meteorites are a unique group in that they come from an object seen hurtling through space before its plunge into Earth's atmosphere.

Numerous fragments
Students from the University of Khartoum, led by Dr Muawia Shaddad, found the first fragments using data provided by NASA to home in onwhere fragments were likely to be found. Scientists involved with the discovery, including Peter Jenniskens ofthe SETI Institute in Mountain View, California, have reportedly submitted a study about the find to a scientific journal, and have not responded to interview requests. But Lindley Johnson, head of NASA's Near-Earth Object Program office atthe agency's headquarters in Washington, DC, reported the find on Mondayin Vienna, at a United Nations meeting discussing near-Earth object (NEO) impacts. <http://www.oosa.unvienna.org/oosa/en/COPUOS/stsc/2009/index.html>

An image of the first fragment found is included in the slides from Johnson's presentation (pdf) <http://www.oosa.unvienna.org/pdf/pres/stsc2009/tech-25.pdf> (see slide 19).
Donald Yeomans, who manages NASA's efforts to find and track NEOs at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California, confirmed that"quite a few" fragments have been found but declined to discuss them further.

Weak material?
Before the fragments were found, meteorite expert Peter Brown of the University of Western Ontario in Canada said the asteroid was likely made of relatively weak material, given that 2008 TC3 broke up unusually quickly once it hit the atmosphere, exploding about 37 kilometres above ground. Another object known to have broken up at about this height scattered fragments over Tagish Lake in Canada in 2000. The Tagish Lake meteorites turned out to be made of a very crumbly material, and fall into a class of meteorites called carbonaceous chondrites, which have been modified little by heat or other processes since the solar system formed more than 4.5 billion years ago. "I would caution making direct compositional comparisons [with the Tagish Lake meteorites], but it does certainly underscore the global weakness of [2008 TC3]," Brown said in comments posted on the JPL website in November. He added that observations of the rock's quick breakup "all but rule out" a composition rich in iron. <http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/news/2008tc3.html>

Point of origin
When the analysis of these rock fragments does come out, what is it likely to tell us? Meteorites in general provide a valuable record of conditions in the early solar system, such as temperature and chemical composition. And the 2008 TC3 meteorites could be especially illuminating because the parent object was observed in space before the breakup, allowing scientists to calculate its former orbit around the Sun. This provides precious information connecting the meteorites to their place of origin in the solar system. For most other meteorites, such calculations involve a lot of guesswork. Meteorites had previously been recovered after about 10 "fireball" events, where parent space rocks were observed streaking through the sky. But in those cases, scientists had to try to reconstruct the object's orbit based on its path through the atmosphere. "It's often very difficult to get from a streak in the sky to what theorbit was," says Allan Treiman of the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Tucson, Arizona. "But if they've got its location before it hit the atmosphere, they're far better off - that's really wonderful."