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Space Science

French Stargazers Hunt for Meteorite the Size of Apricot (theguardian.com) 20

Posted by msmash from the quest-continues dept.
France's ranks of amateur astronomers have been urged to help find an apricot-size meteorite that fell to Earth last weekend in the south-west of the country. From a report: The rock, estimated to weigh 150 grams (just over five ounces), was captured plunging through the atmosphere by cameras at an astronomy education facility in Mauraux, and landed at exactly 10.43pm on Saturday near Aiguillon, about 100km (62 miles) from Bordeaux. The site is part of the Vigie-Ciel (Sky Watch) project of around 100 cameras in the Fireball Recovery and InterPlanetary Observation Network (FRIPON), which aims to detect and collect the 10 or so meteorites that fall on France each year.

"Meteorites are relics of the solar system's creation, with the benefit of never being exposed to the elements," said Mickael Wilmart of the A Ciel Ouvert (Open Sky) astronomy education association that operates the Mauraux observatory. "A fresh meteorite like this, which fell just a few days ago, hasn't been altered by the Earth's environment and therefore contains very precious information for scientists," he said.
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French Stargazers Hunt for Meteorite the Size of Apricot More

French Stargazers Hunt for Meteorite the Size of Apricot

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  • Not always true. (Score:4, Interesting)

    by WindBourne ( 631190 ) on Friday March 05, 2021 @02:25PM (#61127672) Journal

    Meteorites are relics of the solar system's creation

    Not necessarily. THis could have come from other planets or even out of solar system. It is just that MOST were free-formed and been floating around.
    Interesting to imagine how many of these were hitting the earth in the first couple of billion years.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by rossdee ( 243626 )

      If it had come from outside the system it would have had a higher velocity, and totally burned up on hitting the atmosphere.

      • Yeah, its not like it could have entered our solar system BYA, and then upon circling for a billion years, finally hit our earth.
        • An object travelling at a substantial fraction of c(greater than 0.25% c, if I've got my maths right) would travel through the solar system and out the "other side" with only a fairly small velocity change, and a smaller speed change. The escape speed is a bit less than 700km/s at the Sun's surface. But for something that gets no closer than the Earth's orbit, it's only about 42km/s. For something at Neptune's orbit, it's only 7.7km/s. Anything travelling faster than those speeds at those distances is not g

  • The rock, estimated to weigh 150 grams (just over five ounces), was captured plunging through the atmosphere by cameras at an astronomy education facility in Mauraux, and landed at exactly 10.43pm on Saturday near Aiguillon, about 100km (62 miles) from Bordeaux.

    Whew! Glad our space-based telescopes caught this.

    • Space based telescopes are not designed for hunting for (potential) impactors. That's a job assigned to ground based telescopes, because you need larger mirrors (for the smaller, more common) objects, and you need more of them at various longitudes to be able to hand off the observation task from one to the next as the object rises or sets from one location.

      Personally, I'm glad that no Arkensas redneck's "militia" compound's anti-aircraft guns targeted it and fired on it, because they're not designed for t

  • Just eyeballing it on the map in the article, comparing it to Google maps, it looks like the search area is something like 2 miles long and half a mile wide (sorry I don't know what that is in square French furlongs).

    Google Translate thinks anything called meteor in French is a racing car.

    • Google Translate thinks anything called meteor in French is a racing car.

      I do hope that your experience has left you with an abiding memory that you can't automatically trust anything by Google. Indeed, you can't automatically trust anything you get from the Internet. Or any other source.

      (sorry I don't know what that is in square French furlongs)

      There are ten thousand of those French square furlongs (Google, again?) between the equator and either pole along a great circle. With whatever the definition of yo

      • Did those 1st French Republic culottes-intelligente consider that the Earth is not a perfect sphere?

        • Did those 1st French Republic culottes-intelligente consider that the Earth is not a perfect sphere?

          Yes, they knew that. They'd actually funded an expedition to check and measure the deviation of the Earth from a perfect sphere ... oh, some time before America existed. A generation or two before, I think. One crew of cartographers travelled to measure the length on the ground of a degree of latitude in the Russian province of Karelia - now in Finland - and came back with the numbers in about a year. The oth

      • "French furlong" is a joke oh humor impaired one. There is no such thing.

        • I recognised it as a joke on "I'm special. I don't need to use normal units", and treated it with the contempt deserved.

          Enjoy planting another spaceship into a planet because you use an unnecessarily complicated system of measures. I've worked in the oilfield for longer than I care to remember, and I know (and spit upon) just how complicated your system of measure is.

  • Ahah. "Fripon" meaning rascal, or mischievous, is also quite funny. "A ciel ouvert" also means "open pit".
    • "Fripon" used to be a real insult in french in the past centuries. It has soften a lot now, and you would use it about a beloved child that did a prank.
  • ... this never made it to the ground. Just saying.

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