Peekskill (meteorite)

Part of the Peekskill meteorite in the National Museum of Natural History , Washington, DC, USA

new York

New York state on the map of the United States

Peekskill

New York State Area

Location of Peekskill in Westchester County and New York State

The meteorite Peekskill is an ordinary H6 type chondrite originally weighing 12.4 kilograms .

history

His case caused a sensation due to the special circumstances when he hit 207 Wells Street with a loud bang on October 9, 1992 at 7:50 p.m. ( Eastern Daylight Time ) in Peekskill , New York State ( Westchester County ) The trunk of the parked Chevrolet Malibu of 18-year-old student Michelle Knapp hit and landed in the driveway to her mother's house ( 41 ° 17 ′ 9.6 ″  N , 73 ° 54 ′ 58.7 ″  W ). In the ground he made a hole six inches deep. Nobody was injured.

The owner of the hit car, who believed she heard a car accident and checked that it was all right, was able to convince herself that the stone under the demolished rear of the car was still warm. The chunk, later known as the Peekskill meteorite, was the size of a football and had traces of red paint on the black, charred surface of its melted crust. Previously, on that Friday, at least 14 residents of Peekskill and the surrounding area as well as from states located in the southwest saw extraordinary luminous phenomena in the sky and sometimes also made video recordings of them. The original meteoroid disintegrated into over 70 individual parts during its flight through the earth's atmosphere. The well-documented trajectory of the meteors was unusually flat. Their speed was over 50,000 kilometers per hour; Within 40 seconds they left a trail of light totaling 700 kilometers. The Peekskill meteorite landed at a speed of 80 meters per second and was the only fragment found.

The meteorite collector Allan Langheinrich bought Michelle Knapp's 1980 Chevrolet Malibu Classic V8, which had been damaged by impact, and toured with it and a 656-gram, sawn-off part of the stone meteorite for presentation at exhibitions around the world.

The mass of the original meteoroid is estimated to be well over 20 tons. Its path could be traced back through the video recordings. Accordingly, it came from the inner edge of the asteroid belt and passed the interior of the earth's orbit . By successfully tracing its orbit, the Peekskill meteorite is counted among the most important meteorites.

See also

• List of meteorites

Web links

• Peekskill meteorite at the National Museum of Natural History
• Martin Beech: The Peekskill Meteorite and Fireball (English).
• The Car, the Hole, and the Peekskill Meteorite - Astronomy Picture of the Day from November 19, 2006 (English).
• Peekskill Fireball Video: Johnstown - Astronomy Picture of the Day, Jan. 23, 2011.
• RA Langheinrich: The Peekskill Meteorite Car ( Memento from November 1, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) (English, about the world tour of the Peekskill Meteorite Car).
• The Peekskill Fireball ( Memento from May 16, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) (English).

Individual evidence

1. ↑ John Testa: Peekskill Meteorite Car_1992. On Flickr (with partial view of the house).
2. ↑ T. Murray: Fallingrocks.com/Collections/Peekskill (English, with partial view of the apartment building).
3. ↑ Planétarium de Montréal: Meteorites / Peekskill. Archived from the original on May 21, 2006 ; Retrieved January 3, 2013 . 
4. ↑ Damond Benningfield: The Peekskill Meteorite. October 8, 2002.