Howardites
Topic

#Fireballs

Exceptionally bright meteors, what causes them and how to report one.

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Lessons (2)

  • Fireball networks: from sky to orbitWhen a fireball is filmed from several places at once, scientists can find where its meteorites landed and trace where they came from in spa
  • Shooting starsHave you ever seen a quick flash of light race across the night sky? That was a meteor. Let's find out what is really happening up there

Courses (11)

  • Atmospheric entry and fragmentationA meteoroid is decelerated, heated and often shattered by the air. Simple models of drag and ram pressure explain where it breaks up and how
  • The energy of impacts and airburstsImpact energies range from a firecracker to the end of the dinosaurs. This lesson quantifies them, compares airbursts with cratering impacts
  • Fireballs, camera networks and recoveryModern camera networks can turn a few seconds of light into a meteorite in a museum within days. This lesson explains how, and how members o
  • Impacts in Earth's historyImpacts have shaped Earth from its formation to the present. This lesson looks at craters, the end of the dinosaurs, modern airbursts and ho
  • What falls from the skyEvery day Earth sweeps up tonnes of material from space, almost all of it as dust. This lesson sets out the vocabulary and the scale of what
  • Forces and orbitsAsteroids, planets and meteoroids all move under gravity. This lesson applies Newton's laws and circular motion to orbits, and explains
  • The kinetic energy of space rocksBecause they move so fast, even small meteoroids carry huge amounts of energy. This lesson uses the kinetic energy equation to explain fireb
  • Falls and findsSome meteorites are picked up just after people see them land. Most are found years or thousands of years later.
  • The fiery fall through the airA meteoroid hits the air at tremendous speed. In this lesson you will find out why it glows, why its outside melts and how it slows down bef
  • Light, sound and meteor showersMeteors are seen instantly but heard minutes later, and some return on the same dates every year. This lesson uses waves and Earth's orb
  • Speed and energy on entryA meteoroid arrives with enormous speed and kinetic energy. In this lesson you will calculate entry speeds and trace where all that energy g

Books (2)

Famous meteorites (14)

  • AbeeA 107-kilogram enstatite chondrite that fell on a Canadian wheat field in 1952 – a rare sample of rock formed with almost no oxygen.
  • BenešovA fireball photographed over the Czech Republic in 1991 whose meteorites were found only 20 years later – and turned out to be a mixture of
  • ChelyabinskThe 2013 airburst over Russia that shattered thousands of windows and reminded the world that asteroid impacts still happen.
  • HolbrookIn 1912 thousands of stones rained down near a railway station in the Arizona desert – and people are still finding them.
  • KošiceA 2010 fireball over Slovakia caught on security cameras, whose recovered stones were traced back to their orbit in space.
  • Norton CountyA shower of pale, almost iron-free stones over the Kansas–Nebraska border in 1948, including the largest aubrite ever found.
  • OzerkiA bright fireball over Russia in June 2018 that delivered fresh stones to villagers and scientists within days.
  • PeekskillThe 1992 fireball filmed by football fans across the eastern United States that ended up in the boot of a parked car.
  • Sikhote-AlinIn 1947 an iron meteoroid shattered over the Russian Far East, raining tonnes of metal and blasting more than 100 craters.
  • Sutter's MillIn 2012 a rare carbon-rich meteorite fell on the very spot where the California Gold Rush began – and weather radar helped find it.
  • Tagish LakeA fragile carbon-rich meteorite that fell onto a frozen Canadian lake in 2000 and was collected without being touched by bare hands.
  • TissintIn 2011 a fireball over the Moroccan desert delivered the freshest pieces of Mars that scientists had seen in half a century.
  • The Tunguska eventIn 1908 a cosmic body exploded over Siberia and flattened some 80 million trees – the largest impact event in recorded history.
  • WinchcombeThe 2021 fireball filmed across Britain that delivered the UK's first carbonaceous chondrite – onto a family's driveway.

Glossary (26)

Questions and answers (55)

Meteor showers (7)

Impact craters (2)

  • Sikhote-AlinOn the morning of 12 February 1947 one of the largest meteorite falls in recorded history struck the Sikhote-Alin mountains in the far east
  • Tunguska (airburst, no crater)On the morning of 30 June 1908 an enormous explosion shook the forests near the Podkamennaya Tunguska River in central Siberia.

Impact events (13)

  • Asteroid 2018 LAA predicted impact that delivered a howardite, the meteorite type this site is named after.
  • The Bering Sea airburst, 2018A blast ten times Hiroshima that almost no one noticed. Late on 18 December 2018, a small asteroid struck the atmosphere over the Bering Sea
  • The Bone airburst, 2009A daytime blast over a populated area that many took for a plane crash. On the morning of 8 October 2009 people near the town of Watampone i
  • Chelyabinsk, 2013The airburst that injured about 1,500 people, filmed from every angle. Shortly after sunrise on 15 February 2013, a small asteroid entered t
  • The Curuçá event, 1930The 'Brazilian Tunguska': a jungle explosion known mostly from one written account.
  • The Eastern Mediterranean airburst, 2002A Hiroshima-sized blast over the sea, at a tense moment in world politics. On 6 June 2002 a small asteroid exploded high above the eastern M
  • The Great Daylight Fireball, 1972A space rock that dipped into the atmosphere and flew back out. On a summer afternoon in 1972, a fireball crossed the sky from Utah northwar
  • The South Indian Ocean airburst, 1963A huge explosion that no one saw, picked up by microphones listening for nuclear tests.
  • The sensor record of airburstsHow satellites and microphones keep a running tally of space rocks exploding in our sky.
  • Sikhote-Alin, 1947The largest iron meteorite fall ever witnessed. On a clear winter morning in 1947, people in the Russian Far East saw a fireball brighter th
  • Tagish Lake, 2000A fireball seen by satellites that dropped some of the most fragile meteorites known.
  • Tunguska, 1908The largest impact event in recorded history, and it left no crater. On the morning of 30 June 1908 people across central Siberia saw a bril
  • The Younger Dryas impact hypothesisDid a comet trigger a sudden cold snap at the end of the last ice age? A fair look at a fierce debate.

Asteroids (1)

  • 2023 CX12023 CX1 was a small asteroid about a metre across that fell over northern France in the early hours of 13 February 2023.

Comets (2)

  • Comet 169P/NEATThe faint parent of the Alpha Capricornids, a summer shower famous for slow, bright fireballs.
  • Comet EnckeThe comet with the shortest period of any well-known comet, and the source of the Taurids and their bright fireballs.

People (12)

  • Ernst ChladniThe physicist who argued in 1794 that stones and lumps of iron really do fall from space, when almost no scientist believed it.
  • Ian HallidayThe Canadian astronomer who built a network of fireball cameras across the prairies and recovered the Innisfree meteorite in 1977.
  • Leonid KulikThe Soviet mineralogist who led the first expeditions to the site of the 1908 Tunguska explosion.
  • Lincoln LaPazThe director of the Institute of Meteoritics in New Mexico, who tracked fireballs from eyewitness reports and recovered the giant Norton Cou
  • Michelle KnappThe 18-year-old from Peekskill, New York, whose car was hit by a 12-kilogram meteorite in October 1992.
  • Pavel SpurnýThe Czech fireball expert whose camera networks traced the Neuschwanstein meteorite and many other falls to the ground.
  • Peter BrownThe Western University scientist who uses cameras, radar and infrasound to track fireballs and work out where meteorites come from. Peter G.
  • Philip BlandThe planetary scientist who built the Desert Fireball Network across the Australian outback and recovered the Murrili meteorite from a salt
  • Pyotr MedvedevThe painter who watched the 1947 Sikhote-Alin fireball from his window and sketched it as it happened.
  • Richard McCroskyThe Harvard and Smithsonian astronomer who ran the Prairie Network of fireball cameras, which tracked the Lost City meteorite in 1970. Richa
  • The Wilcock familyThe Gloucestershire family who found black fragments of the Winchcombe meteorite on their driveway the morning after it fell in 2021.
  • Zdeněk CeplechaThe Czech astronomer who calculated the first orbit of a meteorite from photographs, after the Příbram fall of 1959.

Britain and Ireland (2)

Museums and collections (1)

  • National Museum, PragueA historic collection rich in Czech falls, including Příbram, the first meteorite whose orbit was worked out from photographs.