William Atkins
Sunday, 22 February 2009 19:53
Science -
Space
Page 1 of 2
The fireball that streaked across central Texas (U.S.A.) on February 15, 2009, has been identified. Two University of North Texas astronomers say they found pieces of the meteorite the size of "large pecans" in a pasture south of Dallas.
According to
Ron DiLulio, one of the U.S. astronomers, the meteoritic pieces they discovered were described as:
“It's black like charcoal. Underneath this crust the color of the rock is concrete like gray.” [ABC News/Associated Press: "
Texas Astronomers Say They Found Remains of Meteor."]
Meteoroids are found in outer space (outside of Earth) within our Solar System, meteors are found flying through Earth's atmosphere, and meteorites are discovered lying on the surface of Earth--all names for the same object, but just in different locations in our Solar System.
DiLulio added,
"The pieces that we found have beautiful ablation crust," which describes how the meteors form a crust by the extreme temperatures of entering the Earth’s atmosphere.” [Scientific American:
Texas Meteorite hunters turn up possible remnants of Sunday’s fireball”]
Dr. DiLulio, the director of the planetarium and astronomy laboratory program at the
University of North Texas (UNT) in Denton, and Preston Starr, the manager of the UNT observatory, stated that the two space-faring pieces were found initially by a local farmer.
According to the Dallas Morning News story “
UNT astronomy workers say they found 2 samples of meteor,” the men
“...wound their way to West [a town in central Texas]
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.”
Images of the pecan-sized pieces of broken off meteorites are found on the Dallas Morning News website.
A video of the falling meteor is also found within this story.
Page two continues the story.
