West Texas- 1700 Gram Meteorite Found 12APR09

Hill County residents find largest rock yet from local meteorite shower
By Ken Sury
Waco Tribune-Herald
Sunday, April 12, 2009
MENLOW – The biggest piece discovered from the Feb. 15 meteor that broke apart near West now sits in a meteorite museum in Kansas, its owner happy to have acquired the space rock as well as the trust of the Hill County couple who found it and sold it to him.
http://www.wacotrib.com/news/content/news/stories/2009/04/12/04122009wacmeteorite.html?cxtype=rss&cxsvc=7&cxcat=11

Meteorite News 2APR09

Meteorite Hunters Jailed In Burke County For Trespassing
WJBF-TV Augusta Wed, 01 Apr 2009 09:30 AM PDT
According to The True Citizen, two Southwestern meteorite hunters found fame they weren`t searching for.

On the track of the fallen meteorite
WASHINGTON — 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.
The Monterey County Herald

Scientists uncover new theory on largest known mass extinctionin earth's history
The Guardian - Nigeria
The study combines for one asteroid data that are usually separate: Comparing data from observations of the asteroid in while it was space with analysis of ...

Washington gets three new public lands features
The Oregonian - OregonLive.com - Portland,OR,USA
The famous Willamette Meteorite is also believed to have been deposited by the floods in West Linn. Another good spot to envision the floods' impact on ...

WL man helps shape parks bill
West Linn Tidings - OR,USA
The trail features informational kiosks and a replica of the famous Willamette Meteorite that was washed in the floods from Montana to its final resting

Head case in space explains light show down below
The Virginian-Pilot - Norfolk,VA,USA
The conspiracy theorists won't accept the semi-official explanation that it was a meteorite. It was some sort of secret military jet, they say.

Big chunk of meteorite found outside West
Waco Tribune Herald - Waco,TX,USA
By Ken Sury Wednesday, April 1, 2009, 01:13 PM
Just heard from one of the meteorite hunters that I’ve been in contact with, and he reports that the ....

Hopper the Meteorite Dog-A Hillsboro collector adds a tale of a meteorite-hunting hound to his stock 29MAR09

A Hillsboro collector adds a tale of a meteorite-hunting hound to his stock
Sunday, March 29, 2009
The Oregonian

On Feb. 15 in Austin, Texas, runners struggled through the streets, midmarathon. A news cameraman covering the race happened to catch a fireball streaking through the sky.
The first news reports said a plane had crashed. A helicopter was dispatched to the site.
But there was no plane.
In Hillsboro, Rob Wesel thought he knew exactly what had happened: A meteoroid had streaked to Earth, scattering fragments -- or meteorites -- over Texas farmland.
(continued): http://www.oregonlive.com/news/oregonian/margie_boule/index.ssf?/base/living/1238027117161870.xml&coll=7

Meteorite News 20MAR-21MAR09

Big Bucks For Person With Meteorite Remains
WJBF-TV Augusta Sat, 21 Mar 2009 14:45 PM PDT
Up to $10,000 for the first kilo of meteorite.

'Dino Man' thrills Eliot Elementary students
Portsmouth Herald Sat, 21 Mar 2009 03:08 AM PDT
ELIOT, Maine and#8212;
Eighteen energetic first-graders in Andrea Rohde's class sat wide-eyed on the Eliot Elementary School gym floor listening to "Dinoman" and touching 65-million-year-old dinosaur-age relics: horns, claws, teeth, a meteorite, ancient...

Group to hunt meteor pieces
The Augusta Chronicle Sat, 21 Mar 2009 01:39 AM PDT
AIKEN --- A group of Western meteorite hunters is headed to Augusta, chasing the possibility a meteor hit somewhere in the region early Friday, bringing reports of a loud boom and a fireball in the sky.

Meteorite from Aquilla area sells for $10,000
Austin American-Statesman Fri, 20 Mar 2009 18:11 PM PDT
Mike Farmer spent about a month searching for pieces of the meteor that blazed a trail through the Central Texas skies and broke apart over southern Hill County and northern McLennan County last month.

Meteorite News 16MAR-17MAR09

Meteor dust: Clues to secrets of life
Moldova.org Tue, 17 Mar 2009 11:09 AM PDT
U.S. space agency scientists say they've discovered meteor dust contains clues to a long-standing mystery: how life works at its most basic, molecular level.We found more support for the idea that biological molecules, like amino acids, created in space and brought to Earth by meteorite impacts help explain why life is left-handed, said Daniel Glavin of the National Aeronautics and Space ...

Molecules From Space May Have Affected Life On Earth
Universe Today Tue, 17 Mar 2009 11:00 AM PDT
A decade ago researchers analyzed amino acids from space, brought to Earth in meteorite which landed in Australia, finding a prevalence of âleft-handedâ amino acids over their âright-handedâ form. Now, a new study of dust from meteorites supports this finding, and offers new clues to a long-standing mystery about how life works on its [...]

Unidentified object from sky hits vehicle in Cottonwood
Anderson Valley Post Tue, 17 Mar 2009 09:56 AM PDT
A meteorite may have been what smashed into the windshield of a Cottonwood couple's sport utility vehicle late last month, destroying much of the dashboard and melting some of the glass.

Meteorite hunter: Find near Aquilla nets $10,000
Waco Tribune-Herald Mon, 16 Mar 2009 21:32 PM PDTBy Ken Sury

West, TX Meteorite hunter donates rare find 6MAR09

Meteorite hunter donates rare find
10:47 AM PST on Friday, March 6, 2009
By KGW Staff
PORTLAND -- A meteorite hunter from Portland is donating part of a recent find to Portland State University.

Video: Fireball during Texas marathon
Meteor fireball in sky
Meteorite donated to PSU

You may have seen the video of the fireball captured during a marathon last month near Austin, Texas.
When Patrick Thompson heard about it, he decided to spend eight days looking for parts of the meteor and he was successful. After searching on foot an average of 25 miles a day, he ended up finding 14 fragments of the meteorite.
For Thompson, it’s a true treasure.
“There's something about it, something about putting your hands on a rock and being the first person to touch it,” he said. “It came from space. These things are floating around up there, every time you see a shooting star, you're kind of reminded of the fact that these things are coming to earth, bombarding us all the time.”
Scientists said because Thompson’s latest meteorite finds are so fresh, the rocks are especially valuable.
Thompson said he plans to sell some of the rocks after donating at least one of them to PSU.

Photo of Hopper the Meteorite Dog 2MAR09

Photo of Hopper the famous meteorite finding dog with Rob Wesel, West, TX. Hopper found the meteorite in the photo.
Photo courtesy of Mike Bandli; Copyright Rob Wesel, Nakhla Dog Meteorites 2009

Object that fell through roof of Dallas home was part of a tree-mulching machine, police say 27FEB09

http://www.startribune.com/nation/40426837.html
Object that fell through roof of Dallas home was part of a tree-mulching machine, police say
Associated Press
February 27, 2009
DALLAS - Police say a 6-pound chunk of metal that crashed through the roof of a Dallas home was part of a machine that was grinding up an unwanted tree nearby. Sgt. Gil Cerda says: "Mystery solved." So much for the theory it could have been a piece of debris from this month's collision of Russian and U.S. satellites.
Cerda says the metal chunk was a grinding tip of a mulching machine being used by a tree disposal service crew. No one was hurt when it went flying Tuesday. Senior Cpl. Janice Crowther said no charges will be filed against the business because it was an accident.
The satellite debris theory also came up when a fireball streaked across the Texas sky Feb. 15. That turned out to be a meteorite. It also surfaced last week when a piece of metal crashed through a New Jersey warehouse. That was another errant piece of a mulching machine.

West, TX-Meteorite hunters are scouring north McLennan County, frustrating some landowners

Meteorite hunters are scouring north McLennan County, frustrating some landowners
Thursday, February 26, 2009
By Ken Sury
Tribune-Herald staff writer
WEST — Meteorite hunters have descended in droves to the countryside surrounding this farming community, searching for the elusive pieces from a fireball that flared across the daytime sky over Central Texas and then broke apart.
But while the fireball and its accompanying sonic boom Feb. 15 were spectacular, West residents say they’ve got better things to do than hunt for the thousands of fragments that litter the land and might not even be on their property.
Spring planting is a focus for the farmers now. That meteorite hunters from across the country are asking to traipse across their fields looking for stones the size of a pecan or smaller at a crucial time for planting has more than a few farmers and ranchers perturbed. In some cases, people didn’t ask and trespassed.
... continued story, video, and photos:
http://www.wacotrib.com/

West, TX meteorite classified by Dr. Alan Rubin 22FEB09

Dr. Alan Rubin, UCLA, has analyzed the West, TX meteorite as an L6 chondrite:

W0, S3, L6 olivine
Fa: 24.2±0.2 (n=12)low-Ca pyx Fs20.5±0.7 Wo1.6±0.2 (n=12)
kamacite has an average composition of Fe 93.1 Ni 5.8 Co 0.83 (n=4) taenite has an average composition of Fe 69.6 Ni 30.3 Co 0.30 (n=9) Taenite is much more abundant than kamacite. Many plagioclase grains exceed 50 µm in size. Some metal grains have irregular grains of troilite inside them. Metallic Cu is present in metal grains. There are some thin metal- and sulfide-bearing shock veins. The rock exhibits signficant silicate darkening.

The "Ash Creek" (Doug Dawn`s proposed name for the meteorite) meteorite sample was collected by Doug Dawn, Dima, Rob McCafferty, and Sergey and sent to Dr. Rubin for analysis.

The data from Dr. Rubin`s classification analysis will be sent to the Meteorite NOMCOM for approval and a final naming will be approved.

Record timing for meteorite recovery and analysis; congratulations to all that worked on this!!!

Amateur astronomer finds meteorites near Waco 22FEB09

Update on West, Tx meteorite:

Amateur astronomer finds meteorites near Waco
Updated: 2/22/2009 7:08 PM
By: Veronica Castelo
NEWS 8 Austin

..."Now there's actual physical proof that it was a meteor. Amateur astronomer Doug Dawn and his team say they were able to find meteorites. Dawn's team analyzed the video footage shot by News 8 photographer Eddie Garcia. Dawn said there was a lot of information available in the film and it helped with calculations of where the material was coming from. "...

For the whole story and TV video:
http://www.news8austin.com/content/headlines/?ArID=232800&SecID=2

Hopper the Dog Finds Meteorite- West, TX 21FEB09

There is indeed a meteorite finding dog! - Hopper the Dog*
Here's the story.
On Friday Sonny, Steve Arnold and I (Ruben Garcia) drove into the strewnfield bright and early and immediately started knocking on doors to try to gain permission to hunt. Upon walking up to a particular house Sonny spotted a meteorite on the porch (about 70-90 grams) he picked it up, and laid it backdown. "Ruben, did you see that fully crusted meteorite on the porch?" He Said. I couldn't believe it. He was right! Right there on the porch but no one was home...what to do? Since Sonny assured me that he wasn't going to buy meteorites when he could find them I decided to track down the owner and try to buy the specimen. I got the owners work phone number from a neighbor and called. After introducing myself and explaining what I was in town for, I told the owner that there was a meteorite on their porch. "What, you mean that black rock that the dog, Hopper, brought up and dropped on the porch?" "Yes, that one" I said. Needless to say, I drove down and did a nice video interview with the owner holding the space rock and recalling the tale.
Written by: Ruben Garcia

Mike Farmer`s Team Finds Three More Today 19FEB09

West, Texas Meteorite found by (c) Michael Farmer 2009

I just spoke with Mike Farmer on the telephone and they have found three more meteorites today. He said that the area is mostly farm and pasture land making it not the most idea for hunting conditions.

UNT astronomy workers say they found 2 samples of meteor 19FEB09

UNT astronomy workers say they found 2 samples of meteor
03:14 PM CST on Thursday, February 19, 2009
By SARAH PERRY / The Dallas Morning News

Ron DiIulio slept for only an hour last night.
The director of the planetarium and astronomy lab program at the University of North Texas couldn’t help but stay awake and study the pieces of a meteorite he found with a co-worker Wednesday.

MAX FAULKNER/Special Contributor Ron DiIulio (left), director of UNT's planetarium and astronomy lab program, and UNT observatory manager Preston Starr found these fragments, believed to be from a meteor that burned up in the earth's atmosphere earlier this week, in a pasture in West.



DiIulio and Preston Starr, the observatory manager at UNT, discovered the remnants of a meteor spotted shooting across the Texas sky Sunday.
They found the two walnut-sized fragments off a road in West, a town about 70 miles south of Dallas.
DiIulio has found other meteorites before, but these pieces are special. “To get something from space ... that’s a once-in-a-lifetime thing,” he said. “And these are pristine.”
Immediately after learning about the sighting, the two men began to pinpoint the possible location with information from witnesses. The pair systematically mapped the locations and narrowed down the spot to somewhere near Fayetteville, about 230 miles south of Dallas.

They guessed wrong.
DiIulio said he and Starr wound their way to West and stopped at the Czech Bakery for a snack. A farmer, who noticed their official NASA-UNT outfits, approached them and asked what they were doing.
“Are you guys looking for the sonic boom that rattled my walls?” DiIulio recalled the farmer asking.
The farmer told the professors they should head southeast of West.
DiIulio and Starr spotted the sheriff and a deputy at a gas station near the location provided by the farmer. The deputy owned some land nearby and offered to help them find the meteorite.
At 5 p.m., after walking a few minutes down a gravel road, Starr and DiIulio spotted it - a small, charcoal-colored ball. Five minutes later, they found another.
They didn’t use any fancy electronics - just a map, truck and their eyes.
“Imagine that,” DiIulio said. “A little piece of charcoal sitting on a gravel road right there.”
The pair were lucky they found the pieces first, he said. Scientists from Moscow and two men from Tucson were also on the prowl.
DiIulio and Starr wrapped the pieces in a Ziploc bag and took them back to UNT, where they are conducting a radioisotope study today. The study will give clues about other matter in space.
DiIulio said it was important to find the pieces quickly because they start to lose certain characteristics once they hit the earth’s atmosphere.
Alan Rubin, a research geochemist at the University of California, Los Angeles, said the meteorite that landed in Texas is among the most common kinds -- an ordinary chondrite.
He said his lab had been called on to analyzed a piece of the substance -- not from the chunks that DiIulio and Starr found -- and "it's a real meteorite, not a piece of a satellite."
Though meteorites are found all over world, DiIulio considers himself lucky. Mostly what's out there are tiny pieces -- some as small as a grain of sand.
“Every once in a while ... you get this,” he said.

Austin- Fox News Video: http://www.myfoxaustin.com/dpp/news/021909_Meteorite_Pieces_Located_in_West_TX

UNT astronomers say they found 2 samples of meteorites near WEST, TX 18FEB09

UNT astronomers say they found 2 samples of meteor
By REGINA L. BURNS Associated Press Writer © 2009 The Associated Press
Feb. 18, 2009, 10:52PM
houston_chron196:http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/buzz/6270243.html

DALLAS — Two samples of fresh material the "size of large pecans" from a meteor that alarmed numerous residents when it streaked across the Texas sky on Sunday have been found by two University of North Texas astronomers in a pasture east of the small town of West.
"The pieces that we found have beautiful ablation crust. And it's black like charcoal. Underneath this crust the color of the rock is concrete like gray," said Ron DiLulio, director of the planetarium and astronomy lab program at the University of North Texas in Denton.
DiLulio and Preston Starr, UNT's observatory manager, said they found the pieces Wednesday about 5 p.m. after starting their search from Fort Worth at 3 a.m. using calculations from all of the calls they had received.
DiLulio said they had just about given up looking and were driving back when a friend called and asked to meet them at a certain intersection. They said that coincided with conversations they had had earlier that day with citizens at a restaurant.
"We decided rather than try to get permission from landowners, there would be pieces in a line that would spread out a mile across. We decided to just do the county roads and we just started walking down that road and it's fairly easy to see. It jumped out at us within 15 minutes," DiLulio said.
"We came back to where our gut instinct told us," Starr said. He said the McLennan County sheriff and deputies confirmed what citizens had told them.
"The sheriff told his deputy to take us out there," DiLulio said.
The astronomers placed the samples in ZipLoc bags to keep out the air. They plan to transfer the samples to membrane cases and take them to the university for additional study.
People on Sunday reported seeing a fireball streak across the sky and DiLulio said the reason it created such a fireball was because the meteor expanded and broke into pieces.
The pair said they were not alone in the search and ran into others including "a commercial meteorite hunter and we wanted to get there so we could have it first for science," DiLulio said.
Starr said the pair had been gathering information since they initially learned of the meteor's appearance.
"We did a lot of pre-planning. We looked at the angles of what they saw in the sky and we were able to map it all out. We put a plan together and we drove around small country roads. Texas has lots of small farm to market roads," Starr said.
DiLulio said he thinks there are larger pieces still to be found.
"We feel that there are probably several hundred pieces. What happens when these things fall — they may break apart. We want to find these early and study the primitive material before our atmosphere affects them," DiLulio said
He said the pair planned on returning to the areas where they had searched.
"Everytime we find one we mark where it is on the map and we can measure how much material actually hit the surface of the earth," DiLulio said.
West is about 70 miles south of Dallas.
____
On the Web:
University of North Texas, http://www.unt.edu/