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News briefs
Meteor news: The Wichita Eagle tells today about the return of "the only recovered meteorite for Sedgwick County," a five-pound (2.3 kg.) chondrite "discovered by Bud Scott on Aug. 17, 1971, in his wheatfield, three miles east of Wichita." It states, "Kansas ranks second behind Texas for the most meteorites found." See also the Kansas Meteorite Society's "Wichita" page.
Fireball festival: The Winnipeg, Manitoba Sun today reports more meteor sightings in addition to Sunday evening's widely observed fireball (news thread, "Prairie event"). "A second fireball was spotted by residents in western Canada and Montana state," and a St. Vital resident reported another 6am yesterday.
“ Space experts have been bombarded with calls in the last few days as pieces of debris continue to streak through the night sky. "There have been huge numbers of reports. We've pretty much dropped everything to answer inquiries and take reports and stuff," said Planetarium manager Scott Young. ”
Lead Colorado fireball investigator, Chris Peterson, tells A/CC that, although maybe not
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Dynamics: Ivars Peterson's MathTrek, dated March 29th, is about two Intel Science Talent Search finalists whose separate projects involve pinpointing asteroid locations. One method was reported here. The other, co-invented with USNO astronomer Marc Murison, makes it far easier to identify close encounters between minor objects, enabling more mass calculations.
related, it is interesting, after "close to three weeks with no bright meteors," to have received reports of one or two fireballs Sunday evening, and Colorado and central New Mexico each had one Saturday morning.
Sungrazers: Referring to "SOHO news" yesterday, comet hunter Maik Meyer points out that there is another coming mission: "STEREO consists of two spacecraft positioned at two Lagrangian points to observe the Sun in stereoscopic views. It will carry coronagraphic instruments with better resolution (spatial and temporal) so that our knowledge of sungrazing comets should also improve. The data will be available near real time in the Internet. The mission is scheduled to launch in February 2006."
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