FYI: Meteoroids are in space, meteors are in the air, meteorites are on the ground. So many get these all mixed up!Marshalee, a space-stuff buff...
On Tue, Feb 17, 2009 at 4:42 PM, Clayton Family <clay...@skypoint.com>wrote: > Space Weather News for Feb. 16, 2009 > http://spaceweather.com > > WEEKEND FIREBALLS: A daylight fireball over Texas on Sunday, Feb. 15th, > triggered widespread reports that debris from a recent satellite collision > was falling to Earth. Those reports were premature. Researchers have studied > video of the event and concluded that the object was more likely a natural > meteoroid about one meter wide traveling more than 20 km/s--much faster than > orbital debris. Meteoroids hit Earth every day, and the Texas fireball was > apparently one of them. > > There's more: On Friday, Feb. 13th, people in central Kentucky heard loud > booms, felt their houses shake, and saw a fireball streaking through the > sky. This occurred scant hours after another fireball at least 10 times > brighter than a full Moon lit up the sky over Italy. Although it is > tempting to attribute these events to debris from the Feb. 10th collision of > the Iridium 33 and Kosmos 2251 satellites, the Kentucky and Italy fireballs > also seem to be meteoroids, not manmade objects. Italian scientists are > studying the ground track of their fireball, which was recorded by multiple > cameras, and they will soon begin to hunt for meteorites. > >
