drhoz
in
wtf_nature
The Grand Teton Daylight Meteor of 1972
Since various near misses by asteroids have been in the news lately, an overdue post about a near miss that was as near as you can get, without it becoming a 'nearly missed'.
This is Linda Baker's footage taken from the Grand Teton National Park, of a small, merely car-to-house sized asteroid that skimmed through the Earth's atmosphere over the US and Canada on August 10, 1972.
There's also a very good photo, here, (Credit & Copyright: Antarctic Search for Meteorites program, Case Western Reserve University, James M. Baker).
It was also the first one recorded from above, as it entered above Utah and then headed back off into space 100 seconds later, over Canada. See the following article at the Astronomical Society of the Pacific.
This object entered the Earth's atmosphere over Utah, traversed several thousand kilometres in the atmosphere on a northerly heading, and left the atmosphere over Canada. The ground track of this object is shown in the related figure. Later analysis of this event showed that the object was an Apollo asteroid about ten meters in diameter that was travelling about 15 km/sec when it entered the atmosphere. It was first detected by satellite at an altitude of about 73 km, tracked as it descended to about 53 km, and then tracked as it climbed back out of the atmosphere. The event garnered national interest because it was a very bright, daylight fireball seen by hundreds of people on the ground. There were many still and moving pictures taken of the object as it tracked across the Grand Tetons, and media attention was high. This object is still in an Earth-crossing orbit around the Sun and passed close to the Earth again in August 1997.
Of course, if it had been coming in any steeper, things would have been very different. Some part of the US or Canada would have gone up in a Hiroshima-scale fireball. And wouldn't THAT have been fun, boys and girls....
Click to viewThis is Linda Baker's footage taken from the Grand Teton National Park, of a small, merely car-to-house sized asteroid that skimmed through the Earth's atmosphere over the US and Canada on August 10, 1972.
There's also a very good photo, here, (Credit & Copyright: Antarctic Search for Meteorites program, Case Western Reserve University, James M. Baker).
It was also the first one recorded from above, as it entered above Utah and then headed back off into space 100 seconds later, over Canada. See the following article at the Astronomical Society of the Pacific.
This object entered the Earth's atmosphere over Utah, traversed several thousand kilometres in the atmosphere on a northerly heading, and left the atmosphere over Canada. The ground track of this object is shown in the related figure. Later analysis of this event showed that the object was an Apollo asteroid about ten meters in diameter that was travelling about 15 km/sec when it entered the atmosphere. It was first detected by satellite at an altitude of about 73 km, tracked as it descended to about 53 km, and then tracked as it climbed back out of the atmosphere. The event garnered national interest because it was a very bright, daylight fireball seen by hundreds of people on the ground. There were many still and moving pictures taken of the object as it tracked across the Grand Tetons, and media attention was high. This object is still in an Earth-crossing orbit around the Sun and passed close to the Earth again in August 1997.
Of course, if it had been coming in any steeper, things would have been very different. Some part of the US or Canada would have gone up in a Hiroshima-scale fireball. And wouldn't THAT have been fun, boys and girls....