'Biggest observed meteorite impact' hits Moon

Scientists say they have observed a record-breaking impact on the Moon.

Spanish astronomers spotted a meteorite with a mass of about half a tonne crashing into the lunar surface last September.

They say the collision would have generated a flash of light so bright that it would have been visible from Earth.

The event is reported in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

"This is the largest, brightest impact we have ever observed on the Moon," said Prof Jose Madiedo, of the University of Huelva in south-western Spain.
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The impact we detected lasted over eight seconds”Prof Jose MadiedoUniversity of Huelva

The explosive strike was spotted by the Moon Impacts Detection and Analysis System (Midas) of telescopes in southern Spain on 11 September at 20:07 GMT.

"Usually lunar impacts have a very short duration - just a fraction of a second. But the impact we detected lasted over eight seconds. It was almost as bright as the Pole Star, which makes it the brightest impact event that we have recorded from Earth," said Prof Madiedo.

The researchers say a lump of rock weighing about 400kg (900lb) and travelling at 61,000km/h (38,000mph) slammed into the surface of the Moon.

They believe the dense mass, which had a width of 0.6-1.4m (2-4.6ft), hit with energy equivalent to about 15 tonnes of TNT.

This is about three times more explosive than another lunar impact spotted by Nasa last March. That space rock weighed about 40kg and was about 0.3-0.4m wide.

Scarred Moon

The team believes the impact has left behind a 40m-wide crater.

"That's the estimation we have made according to current impact models. We expect that soon Nasa could observe the crater and confirm our prediction," said Prof Madiedo.

It would be one of many scars on the lunar surface.

Unlike Earth, the Moon has no atmosphere to shield it from meteorite collisions, and its surface shows a record of every strike.

The researchers believe that impacts from rocks of about 1m in diameter could be far more common than was previously thought - both on the Moon and on Earth.

However, most rocks of this size would burn up as they entered the Earth's atmosphere, appearing as a fireball in the sky.

For meteorites to make more of an impact here, they need to be larger.

For example, the asteroid that exploded over Chelyabinsk in Russia on 15 February 2013 was estimated to be about 19m wide.

It hit the atmosphere with energy estimated to be equivalent to 500,000 tonnes of TNT, sending a shockwave twice around the globe. It caused widespread damage and injured more than 1,000 people.

Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science

The third best place to find meteorites

Not many of us know that statistically Oman is the third best place in the world to find meteorites.
Recently the Public Knowledge Library welcomed Dr Beda A Hofmann from the Natural History Museum of Bern and Dr Edwin Gnos from the Natural History Museum of Geneva, who gave a talk on the Meteorites in Oman, providing an insight into just how special Oman was in terms of its relevance to meteorite enthusiasts and hunters.

Of 48,163 official meteorites found worldwide, 3,274 meteorites were found in Oman alone, making up 6.8 per cent of the world’s meteorites, and ranking Oman third in the number of meteorites found in the world after the Antarctica and Northwest Africa. It is also the first country on the list and the smallest territory compared to the previous two regions.

Dr Gnos opened the talk giving us a general introduction to meteorites, describing what a meteorite is and how we might recognise them, as well as where they came from, while Dr Beda A Hofmann concluded the talk with information about the Meteorite search in Oman and Statistics. I found it interesting to note that this space matter (known as a meteor before it reaches Earth) often comes from the asteroid belt but may also originate from mars, the moon or comets. It loses 90 per cent of its mass while making their way through the atmosphere.
Specific meteorites get their names based on the location they are found in and the total number of meteorites found in that place. Such as the example given by Dr Edwin Gnos, if a meteorite were to be found in Muscat (where none have been found as of yet) then it would be called Muscat001, given that it would be the first meteorite to be found specifically in Muscat.

As was explained, these meteorites are important, because “what we know about the age of the Solar System is basically from them.”
Many meteors have a dark outer later due to its journey through the atmosphere.
This plays a role in enabling their discovery against Oman’s landscape, making them more visible to the human eye. However, in time weathering will erode this outer layer and it is then more difficult to tell the difference between these space-rocks and surrounding earth rocks.
Some of us remember the issues brought to light by the media such as American meteor hunter who was jailed for two months who intended to return home with 35 meteorites he found in Oman.
While the legal situation was said to be not absolutely clear just yet, it was suggested why such action might take place. ‘Meteorites are not just rocks’ they are a glimpse at the wider universe, a fragment of the solar system, from ‘out there’ that we can study to tell us the facts that are out of this world.
However, according to the Unesco convention on the means of prohibiting and preventing the illicit import, export and transfer of ownership of cultural property, meteorites are listed as cultural property falling under the category of ‘rare collections and specimens of fauna, flora, minerals and anatomy, and objects of paleontological interest.
Currently meteors found in Oman are sent abroad to be studied. These are always listed, however, as the property of the Sultanate of Oman. More meteorite professionals are needed in Oman.
Fun facts about meteorites:
• Space matter is known as meteor until it passes through the atmosphere. Once on earth it is known as a meteorite.
• While five hundred meteorites are assumed to reach earth every year, only five or six are found by scientists to study.
• A meteorite more than ten meters in diameter is known as an asteroid.
• A meteorite less than 2 mm in diameter is known as a micrometeorite.
• A 1985 study estimated that a meteorite will hit a human once every 180 years.

Source: http://main.omanobserver.om/

UCLA meteorite collection finally reaches the public

UCLA's Meteorite Gallery, which houses the largest collection in California and fifth-largest in the country, is officially open. The modest museum space packs a wealth of information.

A 357-pound chunk of the Canyon Diablo meteorite, which carved out the mile-wide Meteor Crater in Arizona, is the centerpiece of UCLA's Meteorite Gallery, which comprises nearly 3,000 specimens from 1,500 individual meteorites. The museum opened to the public Friday. Admission is free. (Anne Cusack / Los Angeles Times / January 10, 2014)

The track lighting has been installed, the pamphlets have been printed, and the 357-pound metal space rock that crashed to Earth 50,000 years ago has been bolted to its small display table.

UCLA's Meteorite Gallery is officially open to the public.

To the casual observer, this small room on the third floor of the Geology Building might resemble the trophy room of a fastidious rock collector. But to curator John Wasson, a 79-year-old cosmochemist at the Westwood campus, it is much, much more.

"Finally, it looks like a proper museum," he said Thursday as he surveyed the modest display space. "I'm very pleased."

Over the last 80 years, Wasson and other UCLA scientists have amassed the largest collection of meteorites in California, and the fifth-largest in the United States. It comprises nearly 3,000 specimens from 1,500 individual meteorites. About 100 of the samples, ranging in size from a few millimeters to more than a foot across, are now on display.

Meteorites are pieces of rock that fell to Earth from outer space, usually after a journey of millions of miles. Many meteorites are fragments of asteroids that survived a collision with Earth's atmosphere. Others once belonged to larger bodies in our solar system.

Inside the wood-and-glass cases that line the walls of the museum, associate curator Alan Rubin pointed out a small piece of Mars that was blasted off the planet after a powerful impact millions of years ago. Then he showed off a bit of the moon that melted when it got hit by an asteroid before it came plunging to Earth.

"To me, meteorites are tactile astronomy," said Rubin, who works with Wasson at UCLA's Institute of Geophysics and Planetary Physics. "Most astronomers can only look at the things they study from a vast distance, but we get to hold our beloved astronomy in our hand."

Some of the prettiest rocks in the collection are the pallasites — thin slices cut from the boundary between the metal core and the olivine mantle of a meteorite. Displayed with a light shining under them, they look like bubbles of pale green glass embedded in a sheet of silver.

And then there are the pieces of chondrite meteorites that have remained mostly unchanged since the dawn of the solar system about 4.5 billion years ago. Inside these rocks, scientists can find chemical clues to how the planets originally formed.

"The heat of the Earth messes our rocks up," Wasson said. "Meteorites come from asteroids that have cooled completely. Most of the rocks on Earth are a couple of hundred million years old, but the rocks from space are often billions of years old."

Visitors to the museum are invited to touch just one of the space rocks on display — the 357-pound piece of extraterrestrial steel in the center of the room. It is a chunk of the massive projectile known as the Canyon Diablo meteorite that carved the mile-wide Meteor Crater in Arizona 50,000 years ago. The mostly iron meteorite was donated to UCLA in 1934 by William Clark, and it is by far the largest specimen in the museum's collection.

The display space even includes a section devoted to "meteorwrongs." These are funky-looking substances such as iron slag, petrified wood and volcanic rock that are often mistaken for meteorites.

"Everyday I get emails — hopeful emails — from people who think the rock they have is a meteorite," Rubin said. "It is almost always not."

Wasson has been teaching at UCLA since 1964, and has fantasized about making the university's meteorite collection available to the public for 30 years. In 2011, he finally persuaded his department head to bump eight grad students out of their study room so he could transform it into a meteorite museum.

Without a formal budget, the project moved forward slowly. Wasson first opened the gallery door in November 2012, long before he considered the museum complete. Even in the final days before the museum's invitation-only grand opening on Friday, he and Rubin were still tinkering with the display cases and hanging new posters with such titles as "Effects of Thermal Metamorphism on Ordinary Chondrites."

Despite its small size, the gallery is jammed with information. Dotted around the museum are QR codes that can be scanned with a smartphone to reveal the chemical composition of meteorites on display, along with when and where they were found and, in some instances, how they were formed.

Wasson thinks it would take most visitors three or four visits to fully absorb the meteorite story he and Rubin are trying to convey. (Luckily, admission is free.)

On Thursday afternoon, there were two people peering at the museum's collection. One of them, Courtney Van Gorden, stumbled across it as she passed through the building after a physical oceanography class.

"It's so cool to imagine that when you are hiking, the rocks you see might not be terrestrial," the fourth-year biology major said.

Some might wonder whether Wasson is perhaps being a little ambitious by describing the former graduate student bullpen as a museum, but Dewey Blanton of the American Alliance of Museums in Washington said it was appropriate.

"The core mission of a museum is rooted in education," said Blanton, the group's director of strategic communications. "They obviously have that."

deborah.netburn@latimes.com

Source: latimes.com

How to visit the UCLA Meteorite Gallery

WHERE: The museum is in Room 3697 of the Geology Building on the UCLA campus in Westwood. The address is 595 Charles E. Young Dr. East.

WHEN: Open 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. on weekdays, and some weekend afternoons. On weekends, graduate students will be on hand to answer questions and discuss the collection.

ADMISSION: Free.

For more information, visit meteorites.ucla.edu.

Source: LA Times

Chinese Meteorite Is 4.6 Billion Years Old (And Costs £8 Million)

How much would you pay for this?




What about if we told you it's 4.6 billion years old - about as ancient as the Earth and came from space?

That would probably bump the price up a little. But still not quite as high as the owners want for it...

The fist-sized meteorite is priced at 80 million Yuan (or about £8 million) in a meteorite shop in Urumqi, capital of northwest China's Xinjiang Autonomous Region.

Pictured by Rex News, the 434g meteorite was seen falling from the sky on April 12th, 2009.

Villagers arrived at the landing spot and recovered it, which turned out to be a good idea. According to Zhang Baolin, an expert at Beijing Planetarium, it's about the same age as the Earth and is worth millions to the right buyer.


Source: huffingtonpost.co.uk

Chelyabinsk meteorite hit the Earth like a warning shot fired from space

The meteorite is providing invaluable information to help protect against larger rocks that might pose a serious threat to Earth

The meteorite fireball that fell over Chelyabinsk briefly burned 30 times brighter than the sun. Photograph: AP

Just after sunrise on 15 February 2013, as commuters made their way along snow-covered roads to Chelyabinsk in south-west Russia, the clear blue sky was torn by a hurtling lump of space rock.

The meteorite appeared without warning, out of the sun, on a shallow trajectory. It thumped into the atmosphere at 12 miles per second and became a fireball. For a moment, the rock burned 30 times brighter than the sun.

Viktor Grokhovsky, a researcher at Ural Federal University, 200km to the north of Chelyabinsk, missed the beautiful, terrifying spectacle that morning, but within minutes was watching video of the event. He spent the rest of the day assembling a search party. The first of several set out at first light the next morning to interview eyewitnesses and recover pieces of the fallen rock.

"It was rather easy to find fragments in the first days after the meteorite fell, because the chunks left holes in the snow," Grokhovsky told the Guardian. But as more snow fell over the next two weeks, the holes became covered over. The search was called off until the snow began to melt in the spring.

Nothing the size of the Chelyabinsk meteorite had fallen to Earth in 100 years, and never over an urban centre where its dramatic arrival would be captured by CCTV and dashboard video cameras installed by Russians wary of insurance scams and crooked police.

"This was the first time in modern, medieval or ancient history when a meteorite fell in an area with a high density population. This type of meteorite is rare and a lot of material fell. All these factors give excellent opportunities for extraterrestrial substance research. The hazard from asteroids and comets, people's behaviour in emergencies, and the shortage of astronomical education are all on the agenda," said Grokhovsky.

After the flash came the bang. The meteorite exploded with a force around 30 times that of the atom bomb dropped on Hiroshima, or 500 kilotonnes of TNT. The shockwave knocked people off their feet and shattered windows in thousands of apartments. The Earth rang to the blast, with vibrations picked up by seismic sensors 4,000km away.

Nobody was killed, but the blast injured more than 1,200 people. Many had cuts from flying glass. Others suffered retinal burns from watching the fireball, or burns that left their skin peeling. The toll was slight because the 20-metre-wide meteorite exploded so high, more than 20km above the ground.

Grokhovsky's search parties came back with more than 700 fragments of meteorite and scores of eyewitness accounts from locals. One of his expeditions had skied 50km, from village to village, beneath the meteorite's path. He used the information they gathered, along with public video footage, to piece together the trajectory of the rock and predict where much of it must have landed.

On the back of that work, a search party was sent to investigate a large hole that had appeared in ice covering a lake on the slopes of the southern Ural mountains. The team collected fragments of chondrite that matched other chunks of the meteorite. When Grokhovsky called on colleagues to measure the magnetic field at the lake, they found an anomaly in their readings near the hole. "Their analyses convinced us that exactly this meteorite had landed in the lake," Grokhovsky said.

It was October before a team of professional divers finally searched the lake, but the wait was worthwhile. "They found a 650kg meteorite fragment deep in the sludge," said Grokhovsky. The lump was so fragile it split in three when they weighed it. The heaviest chunk is now on display in the Chelyabinsk museum of local history.

"The most powerful impression for me personally was work on the night of 17 to 18 February. It was that moment when me and my colleagues from Ural Federal University's nanotech centre determined the meteorite's origin and the substance of the chunks which were collected not far from the hole in the ice," Grokhovsky said.

The recovery of so much of the meteorite will transform research in the field. Scientists can use the fragments to understand the rock's cosmic origins and its properties, all useful information to protect against a larger rock that might pose a serious threat to Earth in the future. Ominously, researchers have already discovered that there must be ten times as many potentially dangerous asteroids out there with sizes of the order of tens of metres as previously thought.

"It is very hard to overestimate the importance of the meteorite's recovery from the lake. The total mass of extraterrestrial substance that was pulled up weighed more than all the samples which were delivered to Earth by the [US] Apollo and [Soviet] Luna missions," said Grokhovsky.




Source: theguardian.com

The Hunt For Meteorites Begins In Antarctica

Antarctica is one of the best places on Earth to spot these fallen stars.

Each winter — which is summer in down south — a team of geologists camps out on an Antarctic glacier in the middle of nowhere, often where no human has ever tread. It's kind of like a space voyage, but a lot cheaper.

And it's the meteorite that's done most of the traveling.

"It's an amazing journey to think about, and a very precious rock," says Jani Radebaugh, a planetary scientist at Brigham Young University, from a tent about 500 miles from the South Pole. She's one of eight in an expedition group funded by NASA and based out of Case Western Reserve University.

Each day, she and her team members set out on snowmobiles, scanning the horizon for black specks — samples that will eventually make it to NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston.

Most of the meteorites have been lying on the ice since they landed on Earth millions of years ago. The glacier keeps them fairly sterile, preserving the specimens almost as a deep freezer would. And the white-and-blue expanse gives a good backdrop for the search, which is a little like looking for an ant on a white tablecloth — if the tablecloth were million-year-old, mile-thick blue ice.

"As soon as you see that dark black fusion crust on the outside, you just get so excited," Radebaugh says. "Everyone jumps up and just starts waving their hands."

Then, they drop to their knees to measure, photograph and collect the meteorite. They get excited because these rocks can offer precious information — like clues about the early solar system, and whether there was ever life on Mars.

The meteorite hunters are a hardy crew. Sleeping on a creaky slab of ice hundreds of feet thick can be a bit unnerving.

"The only thing I can hear is the popping of the glacier underneath me," Radebaugh says. "You're sitting on a giant, moving body of ice. And sometimes you forget that, until you hear the pops and groans. It's really magical."

Radebaugh and her colleagues will spend close to two months out on the ice, one group of a long line that has collected more than 20,000 meteorites in the last few decades.

This year's expedition is a little different from past years. It's a lot shorter — delayed by about a month because of the government shutdown. Bad weather has prevented the other half of the eight-person crew from landing, despite efforts to smooth a landing strip on the ice for the ski-equipped planes.

The team that is on the ground is doing its best, enjoying 24 hours of daylight and the thrill of finding chunks of other worlds.

They'll celebrate New Year's Eve under the midnight sun, listening to the popping glacier, and perhaps dreaming about popping a cork.

Source: npr.org

China successfully lands robotic rover on the moon / with video

A Chinese robotic rover landed on the moon Saturday, becoming China's first outpost on another world after a rocket-powered descent to an unexplored barren volcanic plain.

Chang'e 3 returned real-time imagery of the moon from an on-board descent
camera. Credit: CCTV

The ambitious Chang'e 3 mission also achieved the first "soft landing" on the moon in 37 years, and it made China the third country to pull off the feat after the United States and Russia.

Touchdown occurred at about 1311 GMT (8:11 a.m. EST; 9:11 p.m. Beijing time). China said the lander was aiming for a landing in the Bay of Rainbows, a dark basin on the moon's near side filled with lava that congealed billions of years ago.

The Chang'e 3 lander dropped from a low-altitude orbit, using its variable-thrust main engine to reduce its velocity from orbital speeds of 1.7 kilometers per second, or about 3,800 mph, to nearly zero.

Chinese media reports said the lander was designed to halt its descent about 300 feet above the lunar surface to ensure the landing zone was clear of hazards such as boulders or steep slopes.

Once the probe's autonomous hazard detection system was satisfied the landing site was safe, Chang'e 3 resumed its descent before shutting off its engine about 10 or 15 feet above the moon. Chinese officials said
they designed the craft's landing sets with impact suppressors similar to shock absorbers.

Laser and radar ranging sensors supplied altitude and terrain data to Chang'e 3's computer, giving the lander navigation cues during the final descent.

Such on-board smarts have never been used on an unmanned lander before.

Chinese state television broadcast the landing live, showing animation and real-time imagery from Chang'e 3's camera.

Engineers at the Beijing Aerospace Command and Control Center, who appeared stoic and reserved before landing, erupted in applause and flashed smiles when the touchdown was announced.

A few minutes later, officials confirmed the 12-foot-diameter lander's

solar panels deployed.

A six-wheeled mobile rover was expected to detach from the lander later this weekend, perhaps as soon as a few hours after touchdown. Officials said the lander would first vent leftover propellant.

The rover will drive several miles around the landing site, surveying the dusty charcoal-colored landscape for several months.

China named the rover Yutu after soliciting suggestions from the public. Yutu translates as "Jade Rabbit" in English.

In Chinese mythology, Yutu is a rabbit who accompanies the goddess Chang'e to the moon.

Yutu will beam 3D imagery of the moon back to Earth and measure the composition of lunar soils and rocks.

The rover is also equipped with a ground-penetrating radar to survey the structures below the moon's surface.

"As the rover drives along the lunar surface, it will be as if it can cut and see 100 meters [328 feet] below," said Ouyang Ziyuan, a researcher at the China Academy of Sciences and senior advisor to China's lunar exploration program, in an interview with Chinese state television.

Ouyang said the rover will use nuclear batteries to keep warm during lunar nights. Temperatures dip as minus 292 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 180 degrees Celsius) during nights on the moon, exposing delicate electronics to cold conditions for two weeks.

Yutu is smaller than NASA's Curiosity rover currently exploring Mars. The Chinese lunar rover stands about 4.9 feet tall and has a mass of about 140 kilograms, or 308 pounds.

The lander and Yutu rover will snap photos of each other, and the mission's stationary lander will operate for up to a year doing its own investigations. The lander's instruments include an ultraviolet telescope to observe the Earth and other scientific targets.

It could take several days to pinpoint the probe's exact location on the
moon.

An initial position estimate put the landing site at 44.12 degrees north latitude and 19.51 degrees west longitude. The estimate will be refined over the coming days.

Two European Space Agency tracking antennas were called up to receive signals from Chang'e 3 on Saturday. One of the European-owned ground stations in Australia tracked the lander throughout its descent, and another near Madrid was on standby to pick up a signal from Chang'e 3 a few hours after landing.

The New Norcia station near Perth received a strong signal from Chang'e 3 throughout its descent, according to an ESA official at the European Space Operations Center in Darmstadt, Germany.

Chang'e 3's ground team at the Beijing Aerospace Command and Control Center monitored the landing through China's own communications antennas, but ESA's ground stations were configured to provide navigation support.

Using quasars, bright beacons at the hearts of distant galaxies, ESA can attain precise position estimates for spacecraft flying through deep space. Chang'e 3 will be the first time the technique -- Delta-Differential One-Way Ranging, or delta-DOR -- has been used for a stationary probe on the surface of another celestial body.

In the delta-DOR technique, engineers compare the exact time a spacecraft's signals are received at two ground stations -- in Australia and Spain for the Chang'e 3 mission. The antennas simultaneously track a quasar, which have known locations, to correct for errors induced by radio signals passing through the Earth's atmosphere.

China's moon landing comes after the country launched two orbiters to the moon in 2007 and 2010.

One of the satellites, Chang'e 2, left the moon and became China's first interplanetary probe. Chang'e 2 flew by asteroid Toutatis in December 2012, returning the first close-up images of the potato-shaped object.

According to Ouyang, considered the father of the Chang'e lunar program, China will dispatch a robotic mission to the moon in a few years to return rock samples to Earth. The Chang'e 5 mission will launch in 2017, previous Chinese news reports said.

China has no public plans for a human mission to the moon, but scientists have said they are studying the possibility of manned expeditions in the future.

Source: spaceflightnow.com