On August 14th, 2026, at around 12:49am local time, a meteor was spotted over Sims Corner, Washington. It was a large fireball with what looked like multiple fragmentation events, the event was caught on camera and radar, and people reported hearing/experiencing sonic booms. When I heard about it, I got a little excited. I reached out to some people and
It all started on March 8th with the massive daytime fireball over Germany. News quickly got out that a piece of that fall had crashed through a woman’s roof. As many of you know, I was on a plane on March 9th and made it to the strewn field on the morning of March 10th. Unfortunately, no additional meteorites were
March was a doozy when it came to daytime fireballs Read Post »
Students at Perimeter College are now getting a hands-on meteorite experience in their astronomy lab! This innovative lab puts a wide variety of meteorites in front of students, inviting them to touch the history of the solar system. The students are encouraged to examine the meteorites, to learn how they form, and to explore what signs to look for to
Meteorite or Meteor-wrong? – Students Attempt to Find Out! Read Post »
The first time I found one, I almost didn’t report it. It was April 2021, and I was twelve years old, sitting in front of a secondhand Lenovo laptop in Venezuela, squinting at a set of telescope images from the other side of the world. The Pan-STARRS Observatory in Hawaiʻi had sent me its latest batch of frames of raw,
I have been making visual art for over 3 decades and, before this year, not once had I used meteorites as a subject in my art. In fact, add me to the list of folks who (until about a year ago) didn’t even know that a meteorite collectors market existed, let alone that meteoritics was its own field of study.
Erg Chech 002 (EC 002) is an ungrouped achondrite meteorite discovered in the Erg Chech region of the Sahara Desert in Algeria in May 2020. Classified as an andesite, this meteorite is believed to originate from a chondritic protoplanet that is over 4.566 billion years old, making it one of the oldest known pieces of volcanic rock in the solar
The Japanese Space Agency (JAXA) launched a spacecraft named Hayabusa2 to study asteroid 162173 Ryugu on December 3, 2014. Hayabusa2 arrived at Ryugu on June 27, 2018 then successfully orbited, mapped and sampled the asteroid. On Dec. 6, 2020, the Hayabusa2 returned to earth and released a capsule containing a sample of the asteroid. I published an article entitled: Initial
Returned Sample Identification of Organic Compounds from Asteroid Ryugu Read Post »
At approximately 12:14 p.m. EDT on Monday, May 8, 2023, a ~1kg stone smashed through the roof of a home in Hopewell Township, Mercer County, New Jersey. No one was home at the time of the event. However, the owners would come home to find a mysterious 984g stone resting near the bed in one of the upstairs bedrooms. Upon
In South Texas we’re enjoying the twentieth consecutive day of one hundred plus degrees. On days like these I find my mind wandering back more than two decades to a time when I was happy to find refuge from the noon sun in a shaded spot that was itself over 115 degrees. Pulling up Google Earth Pro to retrace the
The Japanese Space Agency (JAXA) launched a spacecraft named Hayabusa2 (Hayabusa means Falcon) to study asteroid 162173 Ryugu on December 3, 2014. Ryugu is classified as a C-type carbonaceous asteroid. (See figure 1) Hayabusa2 arrived at Ryugu on June 27, 2018 then successfully orbited and mapped the asteroid. The spacecraft soon deployed a series of two rovers and a small
Initial Sample Return Analysis from Asteroid Ryugu Read Post »
The St-Robert meteorite fall (As if you were there) In Saint-Robert, a small village 15 km from Sorel-Tracy, as in all of southwestern Quebec, Canada, the evening of June 14, 1994, promises to be balmy and peaceful. The corn is already sown and the farmers are enjoying the good weather. At 8:00 p.m., the weather station of St-Guillaume, located 20
An amazing exhibit of meteorite photography has opened at the High Desert Museum in Bend, Oregon. Yes—Bend, Oregon, the largest town in Central Oregon, best known for skiing and other outdoor activities, is also home to a fine museum which is rapidly becoming a major attraction featuring wildlife, culture, art and history. A visitor to the museum today will be
Cosmic Microscapes – Seeing Into Rocks from Oregon and Space Read Post »
The year 1969 was a pivotal point in the history of space science. The Allende CV3 carbonaceous chondrite fell on February 8, 1969 in Chihuahua Mexico, Apollo 11 landed on the Moon on July 20, 1969, and the Murchison CM2 carbonaceous chondrite fell on September 28, 1969 in Victoria, Australia. Sandwiched between all these incredible events was the Woodstock Music
This November 2020 is the 25th anniversary of the discovery of the Gold Basin strewn field. I doubt that anything will be organized with the virus still around but Jim Kriegh will be in many thoughts around the world. Below is the YouTube with some photos which will further explain this Gold Basin story. A meteorite hunter friend put my
From the ruins near the Arizona Crater to the unknown building that now belongs to a Hotel. Harvey Harlow Nininger (1887 – 1986), a name that marked the history and direction of meteoritic science in the world. He was a meteorite enthusiast in North America and with his love and dedication he also aroused passion, as well as scientific interest
