Peekskill Fireball Movie the Story of the Peekskill Fireball

Peekskill Fireball Movie – The Story of the Peekskill Fireball

The Peekskill Fireball occurred on October 9, 1992. During a football game, a fan captured the fireball image on a video recorder. The bright light “behind” fireball is the stadium light. You can see that the meteoroid breaks into five or more pieces.

In fact, 16 people caught this on video, which turned out to be very important. Using high-resolution versions of the videos, researchers were able to use background stars to determine the fireball’s exact location in the sky. This made it possible to reconstruct the orbit of the parent body through space, only the fourth meteorite in history to have this information. (Since then, a couple of additional meteorites have had their parent body orbits calculated. But it is still very rare.) The orbit is thought to have been similar to asteroids at the inner edge of the asteroid belt, and is calculated to have had an aphelion (farthest point from the Sun) of 2.1 AU, and a perihelion (closes point to the Sun) of 0.9 AU.

The fireball crossed multiple states, starting over West Virginia, and at least one piece ending in Peekskill, New York. The fireball was greenish in color, and attained a maximum magnitude of –13 (comparable to the brightness of the full moon). Many people reported that they heard a sound associated with the fireball, which was described as a “crackling sound like that of a sparkler,” and which lasted about 10 seconds.

A 12.4 kg piece of stony meteorite went through the trunk of a car parked in suburban Peekskill. The red 1980 Chevy Malibu was parked in the driveway of its owner, 18- year-old Michelle Knapp, who was at home when it happened. When she heard the loud crash, she went outside and saw the damage to her car. After a short search, she found the culprit. Having hit the car with such force, the red paint was embedded on once side of it. She did not recognize it as a meteorite, and, suspecting mischief, she called the police. They took it away for identification at the American Museum of Natural History. It was later returned to the rightful owner and eventually sold for $69,000.

Ms. Knapp had bought the car from her grandmother for $100. After the meteorite incident, she sold it for $10,000, and the car eventually sold on EBay for around $100,000 and went on tour around the world.

Sources: http://nyrockman.com/peekskill.htm - The car on tour http://www-curator.jsc.nasa.gov/outreach1/expmetmys/Lesson15.pdf - NASA info and student activity sheet http://www.amnh.org/exhibitions/permanent/meteorites/what - American Museum of Natural History http://www.daviddarling.info/encyclopedia/P/Peekskill_meteorite.html http://meteoritearticles.com/znppeekskill.html - newspaper articles about the meteorite (note – accuracy may vary!) http://hurri.kean.edu/~manfrino/Observing%20the%20Earth/Chapter%202%20Earth%20in%20Space_Index.htm