S&T's Weekly Bulletin: Revolutionary Meteorite Find, The Remarkable Asteroid 2008 TC3

I received Sky & Telescope's Weeklly Bulletin and in it was this link to their article.
- LRK -
--------------------------------------------------
Catch a Falling Star
The Remarkable Asteroid 2008 TC3
March 25, 2009
Last December a determined U.S. researcher traveled to Sudan to recover pieces of an asteroid that slammed into Earth's atmosphere only 19 hours after being spotted. It was a long shot that paid off beyond his wildest dreams.
> More at: http://www.skyandtelescope.com/community/skyblog/newsblog/41873107.html
--------------------------------------------------

Here are two paragraphs from the link above. You may want to look at the whole article.
- LRK -

--------------------------------------------------
Catch a Falling Star:
The Remarkable Asteroid 2008 TC3
NEWS BLOG by Kelly Beatty

This week I'm in Houston for the 40th annual Lunar & Planetary Science Conference, where 1,500 researchers have gathered to talk shop about the solar system. And indeed the big space news this week involves high-stakes interplanetary events — but the story should be datelined "Almahata Sitta, Sudan" instead of "Houston, Texas."

Our saga begins a few months ago, when Planet Earth got an unprecedented visit from a small asteroid designated 2008 TC3. A telescopic observer atop Mount Lemmon, Arizona, discovered this incoming chunk of rock on October 6th, and it slammed into the atmosphere over northern Sudan just 19 hours later. Since the 1970s astronomers have tracked down thousands of asteroids that might someday strike Earth — this is the first discovery that actually did.
--------------------------------------------------

NASA has posted many illustrations about these remarkable events here.
http://www.nasa.gov/topics/solarsystem/tc3/index.html

If you have access to the publication, "nature - International weekly journal of science" the findings are posted here.
- LRK -
--------------------------------------------------
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v458/n7237/abs/nature07920.html
/Nature/ *458*, 485-488 (26 March 2009) | doi:10.1038/nature07920; Received 6 February 2009; Accepted 20 February 2009
The impact and recovery of asteroid 2008 TC_3

P. Jenniskens1, M. H. Shaddad2, D. Numan2, S. Elsir3, A. M. Kudoda2, M. E. Zolensky4, L. Le4,5, G. A. Robinson4,5, J. M. Friedrich6,7, D. Rumble8, A. Steele8, S. R. Chesley9, A. Fitzsimmons10, S. Duddy10, H. H. Hsieh10, G. Ramsay11, P. G. Brown12, W. N. Edwards12, E. Tagliaferri13, M. B. Boslough14, R. E. Spalding14, R. Dantowitz15, M. Kozubal15, P. Pravec16, J. Borovicka16, Z. Charvat17, J. Vaubaillon18, J. Kuiper19, J. Albers1, J. L. Bishop1, R. L. Mancinelli1, S. A. Sandford20, S. N. Milam20, M. Nuevo20 & S. P. Worden20

In the absence of a firm link between individual meteorites and their asteroidal parent bodies, asteroids are typically characterized only by their light reflection properties, and grouped accordingly into classes1, 2, 3. On 6 October 2008, a small asteroid was discovered with a flat reflectance spectrum in the 554–995 nm wavelength range, and designated 2008 TC3 (refs 4–6). It subsequently hit the Earth. Because it exploded at 37 km altitude, no macroscopic fragments were expected to survive. Here we report that a dedicated search along the approach trajectory recovered 47 meteorites, fragments of a single body named Almahata Sitta, with a total mass of 3.95 kg. Analysis of one of these meteorites shows it to be an achondrite, a polymict ureilite, anomalous in its class: ultra-fine-grained and porous, with large carbonaceous grains. The combined asteroid and meteorite reflectance spectra identify the asteroid as F class3, now firmly linked to dark carbon-rich anomalous ureilites, a material so fragile it was not previously represented in meteorite collections.
--------------------------------------------------

I seem to have missed the event last year.
Then again, I would have missed the one that is flying by today.
- LRK -

--------------------------------------------------
http://www.spaceweather.com/
March 27, 2009

*ASTEROID FLYBY:* Asteroid 2009 FD is flying past Earth today less than 620,000 km (1.6 LD) away. There is no danger of a collision with the 160m-wide space rock, but it is close enough to photograph using backyard telescopes. Sunlight reflected from the surface of the asteroid makes it shine like a 13th magnitude star. Use this ephemeris to find it
--------------------------------------------------

Thanks for looking up with me.

Larry Kellogg

Web Site: http://lkellogg.vttoth.com/LarryRussellKellogg/
BlogSpot: http://kelloggserialreports.blogspot.com/
RSS link: http://kelloggserialreports.blogspot.com/atom.xml
Newsletter: https://news.altair.com/mailman/listinfo/lunar-update
==============================================================