Fireball over Edmonton was 10-ton meteor

Wednesday, November 26, 2008

Good, now we know what this was:



According to spaceref:

Investigation of the fireball that lit up the skies of Alberta and Saskatchewan on November 20 has determined that an asteroid fragment weighing approximately 10 tonnes entered the Earth's atmosphere over the prairie provinces last Thursday evening. And University of Calgary researcher Alan Hildebrand has outlined a region in western Saskatchewan where chunks of the desk-sized space rock are expected to be found.
and:
"We are now trying to get all the transient information about the fireball before it is lost. Many motels and gas stations only keep their security recordings for one week or less, so we urge everyone to check their systems to see if they recorded the fireball or the moving shadows that it cast," Hildebrand said. "Three gas stations and motels in Lloydminster, Lashburn and Maidstone are known to have records, but dozens of other businesses in the area probably have the fireball or its shadows recorded."

If fireball images are found, he suggests immediately saving a copy and contacting him. "With the security camera footage we can compute the fireball's trajectory in the sky to calculate the prefall orbit. Meteorites have only ever been recovered from known orbits nine times previously and we want to make that ten. "

Hildebrand estimates that hundreds of meteorites larger than 50 grams could have landed since the rock was large and its entry velocity was lower than average. The object's speed is calculated to be only roughly 14 km/sec when it entered the atmosphere versus the average of around 20 km/sec.
So if you know anyone in the area that you suspect might work at a place with security camera footage of that night, be sure to contact them and perhaps we can find this meteorite (well, pieces of it).

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