Everything about Tagish Lake Meteorite totally explained
The
Tagish Lake meteorite impacted the
Earth on
January 18 2000; the reported sighting in the
Tagish Lake area in the
Yukon Territory and northern
British Columbia,
Canada was followed-up by gathering more than 500 fragments of the meteorite, collected upon the lake's frozen surface. Post-event atmospheric photographs, also yielded the meteor trajectory. Most of the stony,
carbonaceous fragments landed on the Taku Arm of the lake, becoming encased in ice as they entered the lake's frozen surface. As the meteorite fell to Earth, it set off a wide array of
satellite sensors, as well as
seismographs.
The pieces of the Tagish Lake meteorite were all deep red in colour and barely over one
kg in size. The fragments were transported in their frozen state to research facilities after they were pried from the lake's icy top layer. They were collected by researchers from the
University of Calgary and
University of Western Ontario, and were studied in collaboration with researchers from
NASA. The meteorite is currently held in the collection at the
University of Alberta.
Analyses have shown that they're of a primitive age, containing unchanged
stellar dust granules that may have been part of the cloud of material that created our
solar system and
Sun. The meteorite has proven to have come from the outer limits of the
asteroid belt in our solar system. The Tagish Lake meteorite, before it impacted, was estimated at 4 metres in diameter and 56
tonnes in weight. However, when the fragments of the massive lump of
rock were found, only 1.3 tonnes remained, meaning that around 97% of the meteorite had vaporised on its descent, during which the meteor finally exploded with around 1.7
kilotons of energy. Of these 1.3 tonnes of fragmented rock, only 0.1% was found and collected.
Based on eye-witness accounts of the
fireball caused by the incoming meteorite and on the photographs of the track, which it had left behind and which was visible for about half an hour, scientists have managed to calculate the orbit it followed before it impacted with Earth. Unfortunately, none of the photographs captured the fireball directly. Although both eye-witness evidence and photographs of the track are usually not very accurate, it was found that the Tagish Lake meteorite had a pre-entry
orbit that brought it from the outer reaches of the
Asteroid Belt. Currently, there are only six meteorites with accurately determined pre-entry orbits, based on photographs or video recordings of the fireball itself taken from two or more different angles.
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