A daytime bolide?

[Mosbycuz3tr]

Dear brother and sister stargazers:
In Pocono Lake, PA, on 6 May, 2010 I was sitting at our computer located in our front/sun room. The computer is against the NNW wall, with a big bay window to our right facing ENE (and Arrowhead Lake), and a French door to the front porch behind facing SSE. Around 3-4PM as I was doing whatever on-line, with the door open with the nice weather, I heard behind me what sounded like a gun shot. I got up, looked around, but neither saw nor heard any other unusual activity. The next morning when I was taking our dog on her usual walk around our block I started finding pieces of meteorite. I know they were not there the morning before since when we go on these walks I scan the ground for picking up new and old litter, as well as scooping the poop. Over the next several days and even weeks as we walked occasionally different routes, I found many scattered pieces, and one circle of debris about 15" in diameter. I am not good with cameras, so I never took any pictures. But I saved some of the pieces. Most of them are clearly pitted and pocked bits of iron and stone, increasingly rusted as longer on the ground before I found them. And mostly in the circle, but a few elsewhere, there were a few bits of pure black carbon. One other noted aspect of the circle of debris is that it killed the weeds where it landed, and they were very slow to regrow in that spot over the summer and fall. I had then forgotten about it until the APOD recently of the 1972 car-smashing bolide. I was not able to get any response from E. Stroudsburg U. physics dept., and I have not been able to take my collection to the local geology/astronomy club as it meets first Wednesdays when I have choir practice. One last thought: I could use a map of our community to draw the locations of my find: that would get the pattern out of my head and onto paper for others to see. So, any and all comments will be appreciated. Leon Green

[Chris Peterson]

Dear brother and sister stargazers:
In Pocono Lake, PA, on 6 May, 2010 I was sitting at our computer located in our front/sun room. The computer is against the NNW wall, with a big bay window to our right facing ENE (and Arrowhead Lake), and a French door to the front porch behind facing SSE. Around 3-4PM as I was doing whatever on-line, with the door open with the nice weather, I heard behind me what sounded like a gun shot. I got up, looked around, but neither saw nor heard any other unusual activity. The next morning when I was taking our dog on her usual walk around our block I started finding pieces of meteorite. I know they were not there the morning before since when we go on these walks I scan the ground for picking up new and old litter, as well as scooping the poop. Over the next several days and even weeks as we walked occasionally different routes, I found many scattered pieces, and one circle of debris about 15" in diameter. I am not good with cameras, so I never took any pictures. But I saved some of the pieces. Most of them are clearly pitted and pocked bits of iron and stone, increasingly rusted as longer on the ground before I found them. And mostly in the circle, but a few elsewhere, there were a few bits of pure black carbon. One other noted aspect of the circle of debris is that it killed the weeds where it landed, and they were very slow to regrow in that spot over the summer and fall. I had then forgotten about it until the APOD recently of the 1972 car-smashing bolide. I was not able to get any response from E. Stroudsburg U. physics dept., and I have not been able to take my collection to the local geology/astronomy club as it meets first Wednesdays when I have choir practice. One last thought: I could use a map of our community to draw the locations of my find: that would get the pattern out of my head and onto paper for others to see. So, any and all comments will be appreciated. Leon Green

Fireballs happen as often in the day as at night, and are sometimes witnessed (occasionally widely). The sounds most commonly associated with large fireballs are low frequency sonic booms, often compared with the sound of artillery or fireworks, not gunshots. Your description of the iron you found does not sound much like meteorites, and the distribution would be very untypical. If an iron meteorite fell, the presence of carbon is difficult to explain. And I know of no case where a meteorite fall produced dead vegetation. From your description, I'm inclined to think some sort of terrestrial explosion is more likely.