Two years in the past, on February 28, 2021, at 21:54:16 GMT, my meteor video digital camera in Loughborough, UK recorded the Winchcombe meteor fireball over Gloucestershire. Fifty years in the past, after I was 11, I learn it at Patrick Moore. The Observer’s Ebook of Astronomy Concerning the Barwell meteorite that fell on Christmas Eve 1965. On the time I assumed it might be nice to discover a meteorite.
I developed a love of chemistry with my first set of chemistry at 9. By the point I used to be 14, I used to be doing experiments in my very own do-it-yourself lab in Gateshead. I left college at 16, labored as a laboratory assistant and labored half time to grow to be an analytical chemist. My job used quite a lot of spectroscopy. With my curiosity in astronomy, I turned fascinated with spectroscopic functions, particularly within the chemical evaluation of astronomical objects by finding out the sunshine.
After retiring, I continued my curiosity in astronomy and astrophotography and contributed to sky monitoring utilizing a video digital camera provided and examined by William Stewart. nematode Meteor community based by Alex Pratt and Stewart. The digital camera can be Richard Kacerek’s UKPzt community.
On November 11, 2018, I videotaped a bolide fireball brighter than the total moon. Later, after assembly with meteor spectroscopicist Invoice Ward nematode, I added a diffraction grating to the digital camera. I captured the seen spectrum of the Winchcombe fireball with this equipment (Richard Bassom captured the spectrum on the same grille piece I provided). This was the primary UK report of a meteor spectrum changing into a recovered meteorite. The earlier spectrum recording was captured in 1991 in Benesov, Czech Republic, however the meteorite itself was not discovered till 2011, 20 years later.
This video The picture from my digital camera of the Winchcombe fireball, 132 miles from the influence website, reveals the evolution of the meteor’s seen spectrum and explosions that exploded over a number of seconds because it entered the environment earlier than colliding as a meteorite. The presence of a number of components within the meteor’s sizzling gases is indicated by atomic emission traces from calcium, magnesium, iron, and sodium. There are additionally emission traces from stimulated atmospheric oxygen and nitrogen (a few of which additionally trigger the Northern Lights).
Video of the Winchcombe fireball from my digital camera, 132 miles from the collision website, reveals the evolution of the meteor’s seen spectrum and bursts, exploding for a number of seconds because it enters the environment earlier than colliding as a meteorite. The presence of a number of components within the meteor’s sizzling gases is indicated by atomic emission traces from calcium, magnesium, iron, and sodium. There are additionally emission traces from stimulated atmospheric oxygen and nitrogen (a few of which additionally trigger the Northern Lights).
As a chemist, spectroscopist, and beginner astronomer, I am unable to consider a greater instance of nature that gives this extraterrestrial spectroscopy show of such extraordinary magnificence.
Shortly after the meteorite fell, I used to be invited by East Anglian Astrophysics Research Organization Collaborating in one of many few independently organized searches for meteorite fragments with authorities permission – one thing I’ve by no means finished earlier than. It jogged my memory of the Barwell fall in Moore’s e-book. So after 50 years of ready, I assumed, ‘Why not? We spent a bodily demanding and unsuccessful day looking. We got here again two weeks later. Once more it was bodily powerful – I did not assume it was doable and needed to surrender.
In instances of want, I name out to my late father, Dunston Alan, Gateshead, who was all the time there for me and did one thing for my telescope. I mentioned loudly, ‘Come on dad, assist me discover a meteorite. Inside half-hour I discovered a black stone buried within the floor. It had a fusion crust, a bluish-purple iridescence, and we knew it was a part of the final Winchcombe meteorite. The piece was situated close to the village of Woodmancote, throughout the Winchcombe meteorite mined space. It is touching that the meteorite got here from an asteroid near Jupiter, my father’s favourite planet. His picture on my digital camera in opposition to the background stars was close to the Nice Orion nebula M42 within the constellation Orion – the primary constellation my father taught me after I was 9 years previous after getting my first telescope.
As an analytical chemist, I used to be excited to have the chance to check the seen spectrum with meteorite elemental evaluation within the UK. The evaluation confirmed further components resembling silicon, phosphorus, sulfur, aluminum, titanium, chromium, manganese and nickel that contribute to the spectrum however are masked by the comparatively dense emission traces of calcium, iron, magnesium and sodium. The evaluation confirmed the weather I had recognized from the seen spectrum earlier than any chemical evaluation was finished – a bonus of seen spectroscopy of distant objects.
I assumed recording the seen spectrum of the uncommon astronomical occasion was an opportunity for an analytical chemist with a lifelong curiosity in chemistry, spectroscopy, and astronomy. However I by no means thought I would search for a meteorite fragment and discover it.
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