Colour Out of Space in New Mexico

Fireball Over New Mexico
SPACE.com
posted: 24 September 2010
06:20 pm ET

A brilliant fireball lit up the night sky above parts of New Mexico and Texas ...
The fireball, thought to be created by a small space rock, occurred Tuesday night (Sept. 21) at about 11:01 p.m. EDT (0301 GMT) and was captured in a video camera ... It lasted 23 seconds ..."I was inside at the time, but heard and felt the sonic boom," said radio astronomer Thomas Ashcraft... outside of Santa Fe, NM ...

Halley's Comet: 1910 and 466 BCE

Some of us have one thing in common with Lovecraft We saw Halley's comet. I was 30 years old when it came my way Fevruary 1986. Lovecraft got to see it April 1910. Search the blog, Chrispy has made several entries. Lovecraftians know that HPL was struck by measles (and probably influenza) and nearly died in January 1910. [Chrispy's dating is mentioned on the blog, but too detailed to go back over here.] He recovered to see Halley's comet in April while he was also taking correspondence courses in chemistry.

Previously, notable sightings were by Edmond Halley (friend of Isaac Newton) who assisted in predicting its periodicity after its 1682 appearance. He noted it was the same that Johannes Kepler had seen in 1607.

It was notable in 1066 as England was being invaded, and famously reproduced on a tapestry. Researchers also determined that Chinese astronomers recorded its appearance in 240 BCE.

Here at the blog, we also are partial to HPL's Colour Out of Space. The two come togther in a newsreport that uncovers a 466 BCE record in Greece.

Excerpts:

... a meteorite the size of a "wagonload" crashed into northern Greece sometime between 466 and 468 BC. The impact shocked the local population and the rock became a tourist attraction for 500 years. {Also} accounts describe a comet in the sky when the meteorite fell.

Philosopher Daniel Graham and astronomer Eric Hintz of Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah, modelled the path that Halley's comet would have taken ...(Journal of Cosmology, vol 9, p 3030). ... the comet was said to be visible for 75 days, accompanied by winds and shooting stars, and in the western sky when the meteorite fell. The researchers show that Halley's comet would have been visible for a maximum of 82 days between 4 June and 25 August 466 BC. From 18 July onwards, a time of year characterised in this region by strong winds, it was in the western sky. At around this time, the Earth was moving under the comet's tail, so its debris field would have made shooting stars.

Plutarch wrote in the 1st century AD that a young astronomer called Anaxagoras predicted the meteorite's fall to Earth, which has puzzled historians ... Graham concludes ... Anaxagoras made a general statement that rocks might fall from the sky.

At this time, says Graham, everyone thought that celestial bodies such as the moon and planets were fiery, lighter-than-air objects. But after observing a solar eclipse in 478 BC, Anaxagoras concluded that they were heavy, rocky lumps, held aloft by a centrifugal force.

"When the meteorite fell, no one could deny it," says Graham. "The headline was 'Anaxagoras was right'."

Link:
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20727774.400-ancient-greeks-spotted-halleys-comet.html

A "Colourful" 1888 Story about Jack Rabbits?

They were the usual winter prints of red squirrels, white rabbits, and foxes, but the brooding farmer professed to see something not quite right about their nature and arrangement. ... There had been a moon, and a rabbit had run across the road, and the leaps of that rabbit were longer than either Ammi or his horse liked ... Colour Out of Space

From:

BIDDEFORD DAILY JOURNAL, THURSDAY EVENING, MARCH 22, 1888

Millions of jack rabbits migrated from Oregon to Idaho during the recent cold spell in the far northwest. They crossed the frozen waters of the Snake river in hordes, and presented a wonderful spectacle to the people who saw them.
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The cat story is pretty interesting fro fans of the Kappa Alpha Tau. The aligator story - well one supposes that Washington politicians rarely change their scales whatever the century.

Colour Out of ... The Washington Post?

The Washington Post of 11 May 2010 reports a meteor streak ...

Meteor spotted in Gaithersburg, MD

Early-morning commuters in Maryland - and as far away as Pittsburgh and Massachusetts - were startled by a spectacular meteor that crossed the sky in the pre-dawn darkness, The Baltimore Sun reports.

Dawn Teagle Dobbs spotted the fireball as she drove south on Interstate 270 near Gaithersburg at 4:47 a.m. "At first I thought it was a shooting star, but it was huge and bright green with a tail," she wrote in a post to The Baltimore Sun's Weather Blog.

Similar reports - - from all across Central Maryland and the Eastern Shore, and as far off as Ashburn, Va., Pittsburgh, Greencastle and Gettysburg, Pa., and New Jersey and central Massachusetts.

Meteor Impacts Jakarta: "Colours" Populace

Per press releases 3 May 2010
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Blast in East Jakarta Believed to Be Meteorite
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Police and astronomers are investigating Thursday’s blast from a falling object that damaged three homes in Duren Sawit, East Jakarta --- witnesses claim it was a meteorite strike.

Experts are combing the site, saying that while there was no conclusive proof the damage was caused by a meteorite, it was the most likely explanation.

One house was moderately damage and two adjoining properties suffered minor damage after blast on Jalan Delima II. There were no reported casualties.

No fragments of the projectile had yet been found but the deep crater in the floor of the house, the residual heat footprint and melted items pointed to a meteorite.
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The incident comes on the heels of the Lyrid meteor shower, which ended on Monday, but an expert ruled out any connection between the two. “It could, however, be part of the Eta Aquariid meteor shower, which peaks on May 7 and 8,” he said. The phenomenon often begins in late April.

“Another possibility is that this wasn’t a meteorite at all, but man-made space debris like a satellite,” Evan said.

Police, meanwhile, are pursuing their own line of investigation. Jakarta Police spokesman Sr. Comr. Boy Rafli Amar said the Densus 88 counterterrorism squad had been called in to search for possible traces of explosives.

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Last October, a mysterious explosion in Bone, South Sulawesi, was determined to have been a meteorite that hit the Earth’s atmosphere at a mind-boggling 20.3 kilometers per second.

According to Thomas Djamaluddin, head of atmospheric sciences and chief of astronomy research at Lapan, the blast released energy equal to about 50 kilotons of TNT, more than three times the force of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima, Japan, near the end of World War II.

A 9-year-old girl suffered a fatal cardiac arrest after hearing the explosion, and shock waves damaged homes in a village.

Breaking News: Colour Out of Space and Over Wisconsin!

In search of all things Lovecraftian and apocalyptic, Chrispy brings you metoeric news from around the world... :)
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From Star Tribune (link embedded with title)
Last update: April 15, 2010 - 9:19 AM

Excerpt:

A meteor ... provided a brilliant and entertaining light show across the Upper Midwest Wednesday night. {14 April 2010}

Just after 10 p.m., 911 call centers began to light up across at least six states, including Minnesota, as a bright light flashed across the sky from west to east.

The National Weather Service confirmed countless anecdotal accounts of the meteor late Wednesday, reporting that "a fireball or very bright meteor was observed streaking across the sky. The fireball was seen over the northern sky, moving from west to east. Well before it reached the horizon, it broke up into smaller pieces and was lost from sight."

In Davenport, Iowa, Weather service meteorologist Mike Zenner said staff members "could see it from the office and saw the explosion as it came down. You could see the smoke trail over by Dubuque. The sonic boom was really loud, lasted at least 30 seconds. It looked like it was coming out of southern Minnesota, heading to the east or southeast."

According to the weather service, it was seen across Minnesota, Iowa, northern Missouri, Illinois, Indiana, and southern Wisconsin.

Controversy! Meteorite Raucus!

WASHINGTON – An out-of-this world rock has become the center of a down-to-earth dispute over who its rightful owner should be. The tennis ball-sized meteorite plummeted through the roof of a Virginia medical office just after dusk on Jan. 18, the same time as people reported seeing a fireball in the sky. It plunged through the ceiling of an examination room and landed near the spot where a doctor had been sitting a short while earlier. Dr. Marc Gallini said. "It just wasn't my time, I guess."

He and fellow practitioner Dr. Frank Ciampi say their first thought was to give the rare find to the Smithsonian Institution, which offered $5,000 for it. The doctors are worried, though, that their longtime landlords plan to stake their own claim to the space rock.
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"Where two or more are gathered, there shalt be conflict..."

Colour Out of Space Nearly Hits Doctor !

... there had come that white noontide cloud, that string of explosions in the air, and that pillar of smoke from the valley ... all Arkham had heard of the great rock that fell out of the sky ... three professors from Miskatonic University ... hastened out the next morning to see the weird visitor from unknown stellar space ...
- "The Colour Our of Space" (1927), HP Lovecraft

Dateline 22 January 2010

A small Meteorite crashed through a doctors office in Virginia. The meteor crashed through the roof of the docs office and hit an internal wall, then an upper floor before hitting concrete and shattering.

"Literally an explosion went off," Dr Marc Gullani told a local TV station WUSA9. "It came from the roof, through the fire wall, through the ceiling and hit the ground right here," said his colleague Dr Frank Ciampi. Nobody was hurt in the meteor strike, and the pieces of interplanetary debris were subsequently identified as being extraterrestrial by a geologist, fortuitously married to the doctors' receptionist.
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Meteorite hunters are descending on Washington's Virginia suburbs this week, drawn by news of a space rock that lit up the night sky on Monday and drilled through the roof of a Lorton doctors' office.

Steve Arnold, co-star of the Science Channel's TV series "Meteorite Men," grabbed an early-morning flight from Arkansas to Baltimore on Thursday to launch a search for fragments of the meteor.
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Russ Baldwin of Henrico County, Frederick Kraft of Mechanicsville and John McGinty of Richmond said they saw a very bright meteor Monday roughly between 6:30 and 6:40 p.m. But Lee Ellison, a Baptist pastor in Chesterfield County, said yesterday that he saw one to his left about 5:20 p.m. as he was driving east on U.S. 60 near the Cumberland-Powhatan county line. “For all the world it looked like a small shower of bright, white lights sparkling down, like a firework,“ he said.
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Nearly 700 fireballs were reported in the U.S. and Canada in 2009.

Twin "colours" out of space ...

*sigh*. I was going to type in about the two metoer events of the 18th-19th, but Blogger is not allowing much right now. So, I'll just refer you to the news services for:

About 12:07 AM local time in Utah, the sky lit up with a meteor fragment on the 18th. It may have hit near Dugway in the desert.

In addition on the Gold Coast near Brisbane, the sky also lit up at locat time 9:45 AM on the 19th.

This is in addition to a 6 Nov report that an asteroid glanced off the Earth's atmosphere.

In the same reports, they revealed that a very large object burned out over Africa 13 months ago (a piece was found in the Sudan), and another a month ago over Indonesia.

Strange things are happening!

Ah, 1967! Lovecraft Goes Psychedelic

Yow, no wonder the Lovecraft band was inspired. Check out that maddening cover!

1967 H. P. Lovecraft - THE COLOUR OUT OF SPACE
Published by Lancer. 1st Lancer printing, 1967.

It looks like a simple photo overlay, of a skull with flames, and some odd lighting.

Snake River 1880's: Precedent of The Colour Out of Space

Many know that The Colour Out of Space is filled with references of the eerie land and critters of Idaho as remembered by Lovecraft of his Grandfather's many stories. There may have also been pictures, but no doubt lost even in HPL's day. Interpreted through Lovecraft's wild imagination, here is how that blasted heath altered by the alien meteor and even more alien sentients may have appeared ...



Gold Dredge on the Snake River late 19th century (maybe 1880).
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A 1910 Sage Field in the Snake River Valley of Idaho.
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An Irrigation Facility about 1900. In the 1880's Lovecraft's Grandfathe had a company - The Owyhee Land and Irrigation Company - capitalizing on impending statehood.

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This card, confirmed to have been sent in 1909 of a scene taking years earlier, but still dating a generation after Lovecraft's Grandfather's dealings there. It gives a little flavor, thouhh, of the landscape.

Up Close and Personal with a "Colour Out of Space"

Yow!!
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Boy Hit by Meteorite
SPACE.com Space.com Staff
Fri Jun 12, 9:45 am ET

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A 14-year old German boy was hit in the hand by a pea-sized meteorite that scared the bejeezus out of him and left a scar.

"When it hit me it knocked me flying and then was still going fast enough to bury itself into the road," Gerrit Blank said in a newspaper account. Astronomers have analyzed the object and conclude it was indeed a natural object from space, The Telegraph reports.

Most meteors vaporize in the atmosphere, creating "shooting stars," and never reach the ground. The few that do are typically made mostly of metals. Stony space rocks, even if they are big as a car, will usually break apart or explode as they crash through the atmosphere.

There are a handful of reports of homes and cars being struck by meteorites, and many cases of space rocks streaking to the surface and being found later.

But human strikes are rare. There are no known instances of humans being killed by space rocks.

According to SPACE.com article on the topic a few years, back:

• On November 30, 1954, Alabama housewife Ann Hodges was taking a nap on her couch when she was awakened by a 3-pound (1.4-kilogram) meteor that crashed through the roof of her house, bounced off a piece of furniture and struck her in the hip, causing a large bruise.
  
• On October 9, 1992, a large fireball was seen streaking over the eastern United States, finally exploding into many pieces. In Peekskill, New York, one of the pieces struck a Chevrolet automobile owned by Michelle Knapp. Knapp was not in the car at the time.
  
• On June 21, 1994, Jose Martin of Spain was driving with his wife near Madrid when a 3-pound (1.4-kilogram) meteor crashed through his windshield, bent the steering wheel and ended up in the back seat.
  
• In 2004, a 2,000-pound space rock bigger than a refrigerator exploded in the late-night sky over Chicago, producing a large flash and a sound resembling a detonation that woke people up. Fragments rained down on that wild Chicago night, and many were collected by residents in a northern suburb.
  

-What would Lovecraft Have Said??

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Click image to expand.

A Meteor Event of 1922: Antecedent to Colour Out of Space?

(Portion of article from http://articles.adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-iarticle_query?1925PA.....33..502O&classic=YES. Click the image and it should epand and be more readable.)
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Lovecraft's Colour Out of Space isa horrific weird tale. However it's filled with tid bits of astronomy, chemistry, ad contains myriad allusions to his grandfather's descriptions of Idaho. Still, I've been in persuit of a eteor which may have specifically influenced his idea of a "meteor" as a key weird event. Over the years, I've listed numerous ancient meteor stories (and a number of current events, too).

Here's one that is significant, timed withing a few years of his setting pencil to paper, and would certainly have been one he'd be familiar with. Lovecraft mixes chemistry with the supernatural, alludes to perhaps both HG Wells and Ambrose Bierce stories, and finally states, "It was a metal, though, beyond a doubt. It was magnetic, for one thing; and after its immersion in the acid solvents there seemed to be faint traces of the Widmanstatten figures found on meteoric iron."

This meteor has been classified as the "Blackstone, Virginia meteor of 1922". More information below...


DUNGANNON METEORITE, SCOTT COUNTY
This iron meteorite (Figure 5) was found in 1922 or 1923 in a plowed field, some 3 miles southeast of Dungannon, Scott County, by Mr. C. W. Castle of Nickelsville, Virginia. Merrill(1923) describes the meteorite as follows: "As received, it more nearly resembled an irregular mass of terrestial limonite than a meteorite, though
occasional depressions or thumb. markings on the badly oxidized surface suggested its true nature. Oxidation had proceeded so far that in plowing it was broken into
450 feet of the impact area, and she heard the explosion directly overhead. The weight of the stone was 1,850 grams (approximately 4 pounds). No. 3 stone fell on
Mrs. Trutter's place making a hole 6 to 8 inches deep; it weighed 853 grams (approximately 1.9 pounds). About 50 to 75 people near a cemetery saw No. 4 stone fall. The stones show both primary and secondary encrustations. They are classified as spherulite chondrite.
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Lovecraft to poet, and Lovecraft the atheist might have snuffed at the poem below, but it was attached to the scientific and mathematical article alluded to above, and has a nice romantic sentiment. It contrasts to Lovecraft's different brand of poetic brandishment. :)


I do not know fro whence we came or why,
Nor whither bound. 'Tis true there comes to me
Oft-times a whisper - imortality?
Ah, whisps of Beauty that enchant the eye:
The sunset flush, the stars, the morning sky,
The winds that blow across a sapphire sea.
I know I am, and all of these things be,
And more: that Beauty was not born to die.
If God created man from common clay,
For soul I think He must have found a cloud
With star-dust from the summer Milky Way
Caught in its misty summit rosy browed,
And mixed it with the dust of earthy gray -
I still look to the stars with head unbowed.

Sterling Bunch or Springtown, Texas

Recently Seen News

In HPL's Colous Out of Space, it was obvious that his fascination for astronomy and chemistry came together in his weird imagination to make a meteor the theme of his story. Meteors always fascinate us, because they are true aliens to our world.

Elizabeth Wilson, Astronomy: Found Meteorites Could Aid Asteroid Studies, March 30, 2009, Chemical and Engineering Magazine.

Chrispy’s digest: Recently meteorites sprayed over the Nubian Desert in northern Sudan (October 2008). The uniqueness of this event is that the precise fragmentation of an asteroid is known and was tracked to the minute of disintegration in the Earth’s atmosphere.

Hundreds of the fragments were collected, and found to consist of dark, fragile, porous rock. Analysis continues.

Colour Out of Space: Dateline Virginia

Keeping you updated as the end of the world approaches, more gloabal weirding. Lovecraft's Colour Out of Space centered around a crashed meteor. I include a brief report (from T Peter Park's email alert from his Mythos group) and some emails to a local (WAVY) TV station. Makes it dramatic. :)
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Streaking lights, explosions reported all along coast
Posted to: News
Did you see something? Click here to send us your photos
By Patrick Wilson
The Virginian-Pilot
© March 30, 2009

http://hamptonroads.com/2009/03/mysterious-loud-explosion-heard-hampton-roads


Were they meteors? A comet? UFOs?

People from Maryland to Hampton Roads heard loud explosions and saw brilliant, streaking lights in the sky Sunday night.

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Emails about the mystery in the sky
Updated: Monday, 30 Mar 2009, 8:04 AM EDT

HAMPTON ROADS, Va. - Emails received to the WAVY Newsroom:

9:55 p.m. - Jim in Virginia Beach: Hello, we heard a loud boom and the ground shook a little at about 21:48, the same noise was heard by my son's friend who lives in Bayside. We have no clue as to the origin of the noise nor its damage. I pray it is not serious. Respectfully.

10:16 p.m. - Bernard in Virginia Beach: Just wanted to let you guys know that we our house also shook. We live off of Centerville in Virginia Beach on the Chesapeake line.

10:28 p.m. - Duane in Williamsburg: Subject- house shaking in Williamsburg. I saw a flare flying through the air about 45 minutes ago. It should have landed between big bethel road and Hardy cash drive. Maybe close to commander sheppard/simple farm road. This was unusual. I stayed outside to listen for a noise, but on noise and nothing else.

10:31 p.m. - Carl in Virginia Beach: IS THE WORLD ENDING???

10:41 p.m. - Kelly in Onley: I just saw the news clip about the bright light in the sky reported by several Hampton Roads and Williamsburg residents. I live on the Eastern Shore of Virginia (Onley, VA) and also witnessed the bright flashes and what appeared to be a fireball falling from the sky. I did not feel any rumble but could see the bright light and fireball very clearly. Since we live in the country with no street lights, I could see it vividly across the field. I saw three bright flashes which appeared to be lightning and then the bright fireball appeared. As it rapidly fell, the fire grew brighter and bigger. I have no idea what I saw, but it sure was scary. My eyes are still hurting from the extreme bright light and I keep seeing spots. I would really like to know what it was I saw. Thank you.

10:44 p.m. - Robert in Sunbury, NC: At 9:38 PM, I watched a meteor cross over Sunbury, NC. It was traveling from the West towards the East. My wife and our friend also saw this event. Very exciting!!!

11:01 p.m. - Alan in Hampton: At approx. 9pm I had just walked up to my kitchen sink and thought I saw lightening outside...I said to my wife, I just saw lightening and a minute later my dog who has a doggie door comes in and he was spooked! He went directly upstairs which is what he does if he hears a loud noise etc... He is very skittish. I thought this was very weird then they said on the news, we do not know what is going on but they were getting reports!

11:06 p.m. - Kel in Norfolk: My Mom & I Both heard a LOUD Bang and felt a vibration or a Shake of the ground and house.

11:08 p.m. - Lou and Bill Pollard: My husband and I both heard a very large boom accompanied by rattling windows for about 10 seconds tonight. At first because of the wind we thought maybe there was a weather related reason, such as thunder. Then we guessed it might be an explosion of some sort or a crash on the highway just outside our neighborhood.

11:09 p.m. - Diana in Virginia Beach: At around 9:45 pm I was driving, almost to my house and saw the bright streak of light. It lit up the whole area. I thought it was just lightening because it branched out in the sky like lightening. Then I arrived at home, put some stuff in the house and went back out to help my roommate who was bringing stuff into the house too and that's when we both heard the explosion, but honestly, the noise was heard about 15 minutes after I saw the streak. In fact I had just finished telling my roommate that I saw some strange lightening when we heard the explosion. We thought it was fireworks or something. But the noise occurred at least 10-15 minutes after the light. Weird!

11:10 p.m. - Richard in Virginia Beach: At some time this evening between about 9 and 10 I was lying in bed ready to go to sleep when I heard a loud bang and my house shook. It felt as if a car had hit the building. I went outside to investigate and the winds had picked up but I couldn't see anything that may have hit the house. I went back to bed. Then, as I was turning the channel at 11 o'clock, I heard your story about the possible meteorite this evening. I wonder if the sound I heard was a sonic boom that shook my house. That certainly would fit with the idea of a meteorite as it slows down through the atmosphere. Anyway, I thought you might like to hear my story. Have a good night.

Colour Almost Out of Space

Phew! Asteroid's passing was a cosmic near-miss

From 3 March 2009
PASADENA, Calif. – An asteroid about the size of one that blasted Siberia a century ago just buzzed by Earth.

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory reported that the asteroid zoomed past Monday morning.

The asteroid named 2009 DD45 was about 48,800 miles from Earth. That is just twice the height of some telecommunications satellites and about a fifth of the distance to the Moon.

The space ball measured between 69 feet and 154 feet in diameter. The Planetary Society said that made it the same size as an asteroid that exploded over Siberia in 1908 and leveled more than 800 square miles of forest.

Most people probably didn't notice the cosmic close call. The asteroid was only spotted two days ago (1 March 2009) and at its closest point passed over the Pacific Ocean near Tahiti.

More "Colour Out of Space" in the 21st Century

FAA says Texas fireball was meteor, not a UFO

By JEFF CARLTON, Associated Press Writer Jeff Carlton, Associated Press Writer – Mon Feb 16, 4:58 pm ET

DALLAS – The fireball that streaked across the sky and alarmed numerous Texas residents was likely just a big meteor and not wreckage from colliding satellites, experts said Monday.
Federal Aviation Administration spokesman Roland Herwig said the fireball seen across a wide stretch of the state Sunday morning probably was a natural phenomenon and not debris from last week's collision between an Iridium communications satellite and a Russian military space vehicle.
And Preston Starr, observatory manager at the University of North Texas, said it probably was a meteor about the size of a pickup truck with the consistency of a chunk of concrete.
The Williamson County sheriff's office in central Texas said it received so many emergency calls about the light in the sky that it sent deputies out in a helicopter to look for a plane crash.
The FAA had said during the weekend that the fireball possibly was caused by falling debris from the satellites. It also posted a weekend warning telling pilots to watch out for satellite debris but rescinded the warning Sunday, Herwig said.

Colour Out of Space: 6 December 2008

The Colour Out of Space ranks as one of Chrispy's favortie Lovecraft stories. Lovecraft was also partial to it, I think because it brought back fond memories of his grandfather's tales of the west in Idaho and the SnakeRiver. It also features one of the strongest descriptions of chemistry - a rarity in his fiction, but a subject close to Lovecraft's heart (and mine!).

I've had conversation with some of you, and I've done a great deal of research and have yet to find a smoking "New England" sighting of a meteorite that fits the exact (1882) details. My favorite possibility was of Willamette Oregon published about 1904.



If you type in "meteor" in the search funcion {above} you'll find numerous other discussions of meteors and The Colour Out of Space.

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Dateline: Colorado.
Early Morning of 6 December 2008
100 times brighter than the moon.

... the Colorado skies played host to a dazzling fireball event. The meteor blasted through the atmosphere, detonated and outshone the Moon by 100 times. ... the Cloudbait Observatory (5 km north of the town of Guffey, CO) ... managed to capture an all-sky camera video of the early morning explosion.

The Colorado fireball comes shortly after a similar event over Canada on November 20-th, where over two dozen meteorite fragments have been recovered from agricultural land. We wait in anticipation to see if this huge Colorado fireball produced any similar fragments, but eyewitness accounts will be critical to aid such a search. ... All in all, North America is having a great meteor season with no lack of observers, eye witnesses and all-sky cameras. ... astronomer Chris Peterson describes the event: "In seven years of operation, this is the brightest fireball I've ever recorded. I estimate the terminal explosion at magnitude -18. ... Fireballs are defined as meteors that are brighter than the planet Venus. Saturday's fireball was probably caused by a rocky asteroid that was several meters across, said Steve Lee, curator of planetary science at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science. ... "They're not entirely rare - it's probably several times a year somewhere on the globe," Lee said. "It's not something that happens every day." ...Fragments of the fireball, if anything survived the explosion 54 miles above the Earth, would have fallen between Pueblo and Penrose, Peterson estimates. Some pieces may have even landed on Fort Carson.

The Condrite Out of Space

Previously, we posted on the blog about this fireball. The video links are still working if you want to see or download them: http://chrisperridas.blogspot.com/2008/11/fireball-from-beyond.html

Now an update.



... the hills rise wild ... with deep woods ... dark narrow glens ... farms, ancient and rocky ... It all began, old Ammi said, with the meteorite. Before that time there had been no wild legends at all ... till the strange days. Then there had come ... explosions in the air, and ... by night all ... had heard of the great rock that fell out of the sky and bedded itself in the ground ... {from The Colour Out of Space, HP Lovecraft}


Grad student wins space race: Fragments of fireball that exploded over Prairies found on frozen pond (excerpt from Keith Gerein, The Edmonton Journal; Published: Saturday, November 29, 2008 )

LONE ROCK, SASK. -

...Small, blackish lumps on a frozen pond are the kind of sight easily dismissed while driving along rural roads in Saskatchewan.
Yet the University of Calgary master's student was immediately intrigued, knowing these lumps were in the area where a meteor was thought to have exploded last week. Stopping the car, she and her travel partner -- U of C meteorite expert Alan Hildebrand-- gingerly stepped on the ice for a closer look.

The first lump they investigated turned out to be a leaf. The second was a stone, but of inconclusive origin. But there was no doubt about the third. Hildebrand recognized it instantly as a cosmic treasure -- a 250-gram piece of frozen space rock.

"He looked at me and said, 'Yes, this is definitely a meteorite,' " said Milley, who found the fragment about 3:50 p.m. Thursday in a picturesque valley known as Buzzard Coulee.



... The sloping property a few kilometres from the Alberta border is part of a cattle ranch owned by Ian Mitchell. ... The fragments, which can be worth thousands of dollars, belong to the owner of the land on which they fall. ... Space rocks are typically named after where they are found.

The fireball caused a stir in Alberta and eastern Saskatchewan on Nov. 20. ildebrand estimated the rock weighed 10 tonnes as it descended to Earth, breaking up in a series of spectacular explosions before hitting the ground. The fireball first appeared about 80 kilometres above and just east of Lloydminster, then moved south.
Based on this information, Hildebrand identified an area of about 20 square kilometres near Battle River for a probable impact site. It was in this search area that Milley spotted the first pieces.

A preliminary analysis shows the meteorite to be a fairly common type of space rock, Hildebrand said. It is believed to have originated as part of a larger asteroid that was formed some 4.5 billion years ago.

"We call it an ordinary condrite," he said. "These are mostly stone, with what I would guess is about 20-per-cent iron metal." Further analysis must be done to learn more about it age, composition and place of origin. Hildebrand said he hopes to get more researchers looking for space rocks. The race is on to find as many as possible before the snow falls, he said.

© The Edmonton Journal 2008

Robert Weinberg's Art: III

A Famous Fantastic Mysteries reprint that Virgil Finlay did of the Colour Out of Space.