Meteorite Hunting & Collecting Magazine - Premier Issue July 2010
Great Balls of Fire!
Meteorite Hunting & Collecting Magazine - Premier Issue July 2010
The Great Wisconsin Meteorite Fall & Strewnfield
by Authors Name withheld.
April 14th 2010 was just like every other early spring night in Livingston WI. All that changed in a matter of a few magnificent seconds. It was a day that will live in the memories of the local people for a long time to come.
Late that Wednesday night around 10pm a massive meteoroid the size of a large truck slammed into Earth’s atmosphere at thousands of mile per hour. Hundreds of people from 5 states witnessed the huge fireball that pierced the night with huge bright flashes of light which bathed the countryside in cosmic light. Loud sonic booms rumbled through the night, and the concussion waves from the great forces shook the Earth.
The fireball tore through the sky above the Preston, WI coming from the northwest. It continued on streaking above the small town of Mifflin and traveled even further beyond Mineral Point toward the southeast…
Hunting meteorites with a telescope
by Authors Name withheld.
The sky is slowly darkening and the stars gently come into view. The only sound are the leaves of the Aspen trees rustling in the wind here at 9157 feet, all the while the light of Tucson twinkle a few kilometers below…
Events were already in motion long ago before the Earth had even cooled enough for life to take hold. Somewhere between Mars and Jupiter the mind-numbing accretion of dust and rock had fashioned millions of asteroids, each bent on following its individual orbit around the sun. As we know from own lives, singularity of purpose sometimes meets with unexpected obstacles. In the case of one nameless asteroid, a chance alignment with Jupiter tugged it away from its original path onto a new track.
Our rock was now in for a surprise. Before long it would have an explosive encounter with yet another asteroid that through no fault of its own got in the way. Picture yourself watching from a safe distance as the one approached the other. In total silence you’d see the brilliant flash of rock-to-rock contact followed by clouds of dust and shards of asteroid spraying into space. Over time the invisible finger of Jupiter’s gravity pushed some of these fragments into new orbits that guaranteed future collisions with additional asteroids and even the mighty planets…
More to Come…
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