Hi All, Getting back to the Russian meteor itself, what I find most surprising so far is that after two full days of daylight hours to search for fragments against a fairly white background, not one meteorite has been found. The prevailing wisdom ~had~ been that this was an iron, given the deep penetration and seemingly minimal deceleration. But with nothing found so far -- in spite of the relatively low entry velocity, shallow trajectory, and huge initial mass -- I begin to question that initial compositional assumption. Maybe this was closer to Tunguska-like than it was Sikhote-Alin-like (i.e. cometary). That said, the initial estimate of the orbit doesn't appear to be very comet-like (low semi-major axis). The period is lower than that of even 2P/Encke.
--Rob ______________________________________________ Visit the Archives at http://www.meteorite-list-archives.com Meteorite-list mailing list [email protected] http://six.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/meteorite-list
