Otago fireball on 28 August

Here you go.

JW :cowboy_hat_face:

Yes, hi JW.
There was a show some years back with a couple of guys hunting and finding meteorites in the USA. They found some monsters and were using detectors. Was a cool show at the time.
Some eight or so years back late at night i twice saw a meteorite falling to earth with a firey tail. Im guessing they landed in the ocean somewhere in the far north off the west coast. Oddly enough both sightings had the same projectory.

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Hi Shane. I remember that programme now that you mention it. I think a lot of the fiery tails we see are meteors that get totally burnt up on their entry. The sonic boom ones are the ones that get through. Oddly enough, while I find them interesting, they donā€™t really float my boat. I often wonder how many if any of the hot rocks I have found when detecting up in the hills could have been a meteorite. I think their shape would give them away more than the shape of just a hot rock on/from earth & I think I would recognise that difference.

All the best

JW :cowboy_hat_face:

Hey there Sean. How did the hunt go?

JW :cowboy_hat_face:

Unfortunately I could not leave my farm early enough to catch the bus. Bit of a shame but I await with anticipation an update from the search.

They didnā€™t find it yesterday, and youā€™re not there today? Bugger.

The show mentioned above is called Meteorite Men, itā€™s available on Youtube legitimately.

New Zealand is pretty terrible for accumulating past meteorites, being so wet and lush so they decay and are buried quickly, and with so many volcanic ashfalls covering much of the surface regularly (geologically speaking), all our finds have been accidental so far, and weā€™ve found two falls, or maybe three by now. Itā€™s extraordinarily unlikely to happen across one in the ground, but the ones that are solid metal would be the most easily distinguished in a weathered state by an amateur.

There must of been some size to it putting out a sonic boom and allā€¦

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Sadly no luck, just saw on their twitter nothing was found today either.

They are trying again today so fingers crossed. I do wonder if it has been swallowed by a deep sphagnum moss peat swamp or in the river or creeks somewhere. It could have fallen closer to Dunedin or fell into the Taieri gorgeā€¦

The mysterious rock from outer spaceā€¦
There be some melting on one face of the rock and there be a bit of magnitism

Shady

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Still no sign of meteorite which crashed down near Dunedin last month

A search of farmland near Dunedin has been unable to unearth any remnants of the meteorite which crashed down last month.

Those behind the search say it is now unlikely it will be found, but a tenacious optimist still holds out hope.

ā€œBut he had not given up hope and intended on returning with a metal detector in future.ā€

Hopefully there will be a find. We all want to see it.
Spacejunk, yeh.

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They should have had detectors from the start but still a big ask in finding it. Especially if it is small which it seems to be. Anything of a decent size would leave an impact hole or skid zone with possible debry field if it broke up on impact scattering bits. Even a crater. What are the chances that it didnā€™t make it to earth despite the sonic boom?

JW :cowboy_hat_face:

A crater was unlikely, in spite of what I saw reported, unless itā€™s big enough that the luminous streak goes all the way to the ground, they quickly slow down to their terminal velocity, just the maximum speed it would reach if you dropped it off a big enough cliff, thatā€™s not enough energy to blast a crater in damp soil. One of the cameras showed a rapid flickering, those are fragmentation events, when the rock suddenly fractures and more surface area gets exposed to stream hot gases. They come fast enough that I figured the rock was not particularly strong, so itā€™s likely to have become many small pieces which fall slower and are affected more by falling through ~18km of variable cross-wind. It all leads to at best a very broad area to start searching, and to begin that with detectors would have taken too long, they are ideal for finding all of the hidden pieces once itā€™s really known exactly where they can be. Itā€™s lambing soon, access is being lost, and over time it gets much harder to find small ones, but Iā€™d go out there with that optimist and my FoxyPI any day.

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White light, sonic boom, pics of flickering light, sounds like an air burst.
Keep an eye out peeps, theres bound to be another one. Space rocks are reknowned for entering earth along the same projectory.

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One news clip from YouTube.

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Elusive meteorite still an exciting event

The search has been called off, but the mere possibility of a meteorite falling on Otago land has still got Otago scientists incredibly excited

To no avail more than 120 people scoured private farmland over three days

Associate Professor Scottā€™s understanding that if a meteorite is found on private property, it legally belongs to the landowner, but if itā€™s found on public property, then itā€™s ā€œfinders keepersā€.

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Spacejunk.
Hats off to all those who spent the time for a look.

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