Rocks from Space - ancient artifacts

(I changed the name of this thread to give it a more general topic of discussion)

One of my various hobbies (or is that obsessions) is collecting meteorites. Yes, rocks from space, 4.6 billion years old (give or take a few million years) artifacts from the birth of our universe.

And one of the most amazing (and scary) events in the recent history of meteoric science was the entry and observation of one of the largest of these objects in the last 100 years.

The Chelyabinsk meteor.

Here is a 1.97 gram piece of the meteorite which now resides in my collection.



I'll let Wiki fill in the basic details.

The Chelyabinsk meteor was a near-Earth asteroid that entered Earth's atmosphere over Russia on 15 February 2013 at about 09:20 YEKT (03:20 UTC), with an estimated speed of 18.6 km/s (over 41,000 mph or 66,960 km/h), almost 60 times the speed of sound.[1] It quickly became a brilliant superbolide meteor over the southern Ural region. The light from the meteor was brighter than the sun. It was observed over a wide area of the region and in neighbouring republics. Eyewitnesses also felt intense heat from the fireball.

Due to its enormous velocity and shallow atmospheric entry angle, the object exploded in an air burst over Chelyabinsk Oblast, at a height of around 23.3 km (14.5 miles, 76,000 feet). The explosion generated a bright flash, producing many small fragmentary meteorites and a powerful shock wave. The atmosphere absorbed most of the object's energy, with a total kinetic energy before atmospheric impact equivalent to approximately 500 kilotons of TNT (about 1.8 PJ), 20–30 times more energy than was released from the atomic bomb detonated at Hiroshima.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chelyabinsk_meteor

Here is a nice compilation of videos from the event.

[youtube:2ntt6ib0][/youtube:2ntt6ib0]

Never in the history of meteoric events has any rock from space been seen by so many people and had so much scientific real time information collected. Scientist will be studying this event for decades to come.

On another mountain form (to remain unnamed) some witnesses a fireball about 7:36 last night while driving near Deer Creek Valley Ranchos. He/she didn't say what direction it was moving, although he/she pondered "Maybe it hit around Mount Evans." So they may have been view it moving westerly.

No chance of it hitting Mt. Evans if he/she saw it streak by, it would be many miles away before it came close to hitting the ground. And like most meteors, it probably totally burned up before even getting near the ground.

If you saw and heard it explode in midair, then there is a chance of it coming down somewhere closer to your viewing point (when/if it explodes, the airspeed is greatly reduced and you have many fragments scattered).

But I was curious if anyone else saw it and has some more details. Direction, colors they saw, were you outside and hear any noise associated with it... etc?

Nada but wasn't looking for it. If it was headed towards Mt. Evans wouldn't they have some pix, info about it from their Observatory?

The Observatory is unattended during the winter months. In fact I wonder if it has been repaired from the wind damage in 2012. http://www.denverpost.com/ci_20641406/w ... ount-evans

GreatGran wrote: Nada but wasn't looking for it. If it was headed towards Mt. Evans wouldn't they have some pix, info about it from their Observatory?

Oh... I wasn't looking for scientific evidence of what pass over the other night, I was just wondering if anyone else saw it.

Cloudbait Observatory in Colorado is an unmanned photographic system designed to pick up meteors that flies by like that.

I was more interested in any humans who may have seen it.