Richard McCrosky
The Harvard and Smithsonian astronomer who ran the Prairie Network of fireball cameras, which tracked the Lost City meteorite in 1970.
Key facts
- Born
- 1924
- Died
- 2012
- Nationality
- American
- Field
- Astronomer
Richard E. McCrosky, known as Mac, spent his career at the Harvard College Observatory and the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory studying meteors. In the 1950s he and Harlan Smith set up pairs of cameras in New Mexico to photograph meteors from two places, so that their paths could be measured.
From 1964 he led the Prairie Network, a set of 16 automatic camera stations spread across the plains of the central United States, from Illinois to Oklahoma. Each night the cameras photographed the whole sky, and a rotating shutter chopped each fireball's trail into segments so its speed could be measured.
On 3 January 1970 a bright fireball was recorded over Oklahoma. McCrosky's team calculated its path and predicted where pieces should lie. On 9 January a team member found a stone of about 10 kilograms on a snowy road near the town of Lost City, close to the predicted spot. More fragments were found later.
Lost City was only the second meteorite, after Příbram, with a precisely known orbit. Both had come from the asteroid belt. The network also showed that many bright fireballs are made by fragile bodies that break up completely high in the air, so that only a small share of fireballs ever drop meteorites.
On the timeline
- 3 January 1970Lost City: a fall caught on camera