Starship Asterisk*

http://weblogs.marylandweather.com/2010/01/mondays_meteor_fell_on_lorton.html wrote:
Monday's meteor fell on Lorton, Va. dental office
by Frank Roylance January 20, 2010, Baltimore Sun

<<A Washington DC television station is reporting an apparent meteorite fall in Lorton, Va. The space rock, which has been taken to the Smithsonian Institution, crashed through the roof of a dentist's office at around 5:45 p.m. on Monday, narrowly missing patients and staff.

The reported time of the fall matches closely the time that scores of people from New Jersey to southern Virginia reported they saw a bright meteor fall, leaving a writhing smoke trail in the twilight sky. The Baltimore Sun's WeatherBlog has received more than 100 reports of the fall from observers.

The story on the Web site of WUSA9 in Washington says the mango-sized meteorite crashed through the roof and acoustical tiles of the Williamsburg Square Family Practice office in Lorton. Dr. Frank Ciampi told the station the crash was so loud he thought bookshelves had toppled.



Experts at the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Natural History, interviewed by the station, confirmed the fractured meteorite was a stony "chondrite" meteorite, with a dark fusion crust formed by the heat of its passage through the atmosphere.

Professional meteorite hunter Steve Arnold says he is on his way to Virginia. "I hope to find some other pieces," he said in email to the WeatherBlog. Arnold also took part in the apparently unsuccessful hunt for fragments of the meteor that fell somewhere along the Mason-Dixon line north of Baltimore last July 6. That fall was accompanied by a sonic boom that startled residents in Maryland and Pennsylvania.

The Smithsonian museum's Linda Welzenbach said the Lorton meteorite is believed to be only the fourth confirmed meteorite fall in Virginia's history.
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Comments: I saw something this morning at 6:05. I live in Parkton and I was walking down the driveway to my car and saw something blue streak across the sky. I was facing north-northwest and the streak was probably coming from the east-southeast heading west-northwest. At about 8 or 9 degress above the horizon it faded away.
It was pretty cool to see.

Posted by: Steve Singer | January 21, 2010 7:11 AM>>

neufer wrote:
Re: Mars Opposition 2010 (2010 Jan 29)

http://weblogs.marylandweather.com/2010/01/lorton_meteorite_falls_into_ow.html wrote:
Lorton meteorite falls into ownership fight

<<You knew this had to happen: The Lorton, Va. doctors whose office was drilled by the meteorite that fell from the sky Jan. 18 are now in a battle with their landlord over the ownership of the Lorton meteoritespace rock. The docs donated the meteorite to the Smithsonian, and according to this morning's Washington Post, the Smithsonian gave them $5,000 as an expression of their gratitude (and recognition that the stone is worth far more on the commercial market). But now the landlord is asserting his rights as the owner of the land where the meteor fell. He claims the rock is his, and he may have the law on his side. For now, the Lorton meteorite remains at the Smithsonian. Four-and-a-half billion years drifting in space, and it ends in an all-too-human scrap over property and money.>>