Hi Sterling, Thanks for the answer, and links.
Still have a question though. I'm more curious about the angle of
descent. The paper mentions an angle of 45 degrees.
This seems like a very "safe" guess. Are there any data, or information
on the angle of descent other than in the paper you provided a link to.
See this crater photo from Google Earth:
http://www.mhcmagazine.com/images/crater.jpg
The crater is not perfectly round as would be expected from an impactor
coming in at a sharper angle.In fact the crater is more elliptical in
shape. It appears as if the impactor hit at an angle quite a bit
shallower than 45 degrees.
Is it possible the impactor came in at a shallower angle?
Regards,
Eric
On 9/10/2010 1:34 AM, Sterling K. Webb wrote:
Eric, List,
That is the conclusion of the 2005 paper in "Nature" by
Melosh and Collins. Their computer models suggest it
fragmented and came in as a swarm of pieces, much
slowed by the atmosphere.
Here's two popular articles:
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2005/03/0310_050310_meteorcrater.html
and
http://www.astronomy.com/asy/default.aspx?c=a&id=2965
Here's original paper:
http://amcg.ese.ic.ac.uk/~gsc/publications/articles/download/article7.pdf
Well, one page from Nature, Vol. 434, 10 March, 2005.
Sterling K. Webb
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
----- Original Message ----- From: "Meteorites USA"
<e...@meteoritesusa.com>
To: "Meteorite-list" <meteorite-list@meteoritecentral.com>
Sent: Thursday, September 09, 2010 10:44 AM
Subject: [meteorite-list] Meteor Crater Impactor?
Hi List,
Can someone tell me the proposed/accepted angle of descent of the
asteroid which formed Meteor Crater in AZ?
Wikipedia has the impactor at 50 meters across, and velocity at 12.8
km/s. Is this accurate?
Eric
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