The preatmospheric mass of the Tagish Lake meteoroid was about 200,000 kilograms. Its calculated orbit indicates affinity to the Apollo asteroids with a semimajor axis in the middle of the asteroid belt, consistent with a linkage to low-albedo C, D, and P type asteroids. The mineralogy, oxygen isotope, and bulk chemical composition of recovered samples of the Tagish Lake meteorite are intermediate between CM and CI meteorites. These data suggest that the Tagish Lake meteorite may be one of the most primitive solar system materials yet studied.
Abstract-The Tagish Lake C2 (ungrouped) carbonaceous chondrite fall of January 18, 2000, delivered ∼10 kg of one of the most primitive and physically weak meteorites yet studied. In this paper, we report the detailed circumstances of the fall and the recovery of all documented Tagish Lake fragments from a strewnfield at least 16 km long and 3 to 4 km wide. Nearly 1 kg of "pristine" meteorites were collected one week after the fall before new snow covered the strewnfield; the majority of the recovered mass was collected during the spring melt. Ground eyewitnesses and a variety of instrument-recorded observations of the Tagish Lake fireball provide a refined estimate of the fireball trajectory. From its calculated orbit and its similarity to the remotely sensed properties of the D-and P-class asteroids, the Tagish Lake carbonaceous chondrite apparently represents these outer belt asteroids. The cosmogenic nuclide results and modeled production indicate a prefall radius of 2.1-2.4 m (corresponding to 60-90 tons) consistent with the observed fireball energy release. The bulk oxygen-isotope compositions plot just below the terrestrial fractionation line (TFL), following a trend similar to the CM meteorite mixing line. The bulk density of the Tagish Lake material (1.64 ± 0.02 g/cm 3 ) is the same, within uncertainty, as the total bulk densities of several C-class and especially D-and P-class asteroids. The high microporosity of Tagish Lake samples (∼40%) provides an obvious candidate material for the composition of low bulk density primitive asteroids.
The Global Meteor Network (GMN) utilizes highly sensitive low-cost CMOS video cameras which run open-source meteor detection software on Raspberry Pi computers. Currently, over 450 GMN cameras in 30 countries are deployed. The main goal of the network is to provide long-term characterization of the radiants, flux, and size distribution of annual meteor showers and outbursts in the optical meteor mass range. The rapid 24-h publication cycle the orbital data will enhance the public situational awareness of the near-Earth meteoroid environment. The GMN also aims to increase the number of instrumentally observed meteorite falls and the transparency of data reduction methods. A novel astrometry calibration method is presented which allows decoupling of the camera pointing from the distortion, and is used for frequent pointing calibrations through the night. Using wide-field cameras (88° × 48°) with a limiting stellar magnitude of +6.0 ± 0.5 at 25 frames per second, over 220 000 precise meteoroid orbits were collected since 2018 December until 2021 June. The median radiant precision of all computed trajectories is 0.47°, 0.32° for $\sim 20{{\ \rm per\ cent}}$ of meteors which were observed from 4 + stations, a precision sufficient to measure physical dispersions of meteor showers. All non-daytime annual established meteor showers were observed during that time, including five outbursts. An analysis of a meteorite-dropping fireball is presented which showed visible wake, fragmentation details, and several discernible fragments. It had spatial trajectory fit errors of only ∼40 m, which translated into the estimated radiant and velocity errors of 3 arcmin and tens of meters per second.
The Hamburg (H4) meteorite fell on 17 January 2018 at 01:08 UT approximately 10 km north of Ann Arbor, Michigan. More than two dozen fragments totaling under 1 kg were recovered, primarily from frozen lake surfaces. The fireball initial velocity was 15.83 ± 0.05 km s−1, based on four independent records showing the fireball above 50 km altitude. The radiant had a zenith angle of 66.14 ± 0.29° and an azimuth of 121.56 ± 1.2°. The resulting low inclination (<1°) Apollo‐type orbit has a large aphelion distance and Tisserand value relative to Jupiter (Tj) of ~3. Two major flares dominate the energy deposition profile, centered at 24.1 and 21.7 km altitude, respectively, under dynamic pressures of 5–7 MPa. The Geostationary Lightning Mapper on the Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite‐16 also detected the two main flares and their relative timing and peak flux agree with the video‐derived brightness profile. Our preferred total energy for the Hamburg fireball is 2–7 T TNT (8.4–28 × 109 J), which corresponds to a likely initial mass in the range of 60–225 kg or diameter between 0.3 and 0.5 m. Based on the model of Granvik et al. (2018), the meteorite originated in an escape route from the mid to outer asteroid belt. Hamburg is the 14th known H chondrite with an instrumentally derived preatmospheric orbit, half of which have small (<5°) inclinations making connection with (6) Hebe problematic. A definitive parent body consistent with all 14 known H chondrite orbits remains elusive.
In this paper, we describe an improved technique for using the backscattered phase from meteor radar echo measurements just prior to the specular point (t 0) to calculate meteor speeds and their uncertainty. Our method, which builds on earlier work of Cervera et al. (1997, https://doi.org/10.1029/ 96RS03638), scans possible speeds in the Fresnel distance-time domain with a dynamic, sliding window and derives a best-speed estimate from the resultant speed distribution. We test the performance of our method, called pre-t 0 speeds by sliding-slopes technique (PSSST), on transverse scattered meteor echoes observed by the Middle Atmosphere Alomar Radar System (MAARSY) and the Canadian Meteor Orbit Radar (CMOR) and compare the results to time-of-flight and Fresnel transform speed estimates. Our novel technique is shown to produce good results when compared to both model and speed measurements using other techniques. We show that our speed precision is ±5% at speeds less than 40 km/s, and we find that more than 90% of all CMOR multistation echoes have PSSST solutions. For CMOR data, PSSST is robust against the selection of critical phase value and poor phase unwrapping. Pick errors of up to ±6 pulses for meteor speeds less than about 50 km/s produce errors of less than ±5% of the meteoroid speed. In addition, the width of the PSSST speed Kernel density estimate (KDE) is used as a natural measure of uncertainty that captures both noise and t 0 pick uncertainties.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.
customersupport@researchsolutions.com
10624 S. Eastern Ave., Ste. A-614
Henderson, NV 89052, USA
This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.
Copyright © 2025 scite LLC. All rights reserved.
Made with 💙 for researchers
Part of the Research Solutions Family.