Moment

Orbital OdditiesBuzzard Bolideby Bruce McCurdy, Edmonton Centre (bmccurdy@telusplanet.net)There’s something solid forming in the air,The wall of death is lowered in Times Square.No-one seems to care,They carry on as if nothing was there.The wind is blowing harder now,Blowing dust into my eyes.The dust settles on my skin,Making a crust I cannot move inAnd I’m hovering like a fly,waiting for the windshield on the freeway.— Genesis, “Fly on a Windshield”The singer, a young Peter Gabriel at his most vulnerable,pauses as he awaits the inevitable. The tension builds fora moment as his voice trails off, then simultaneously thespotlights flash, the cymbals crash, and the music explodes ina strange and wonderful new direction. A dense instrumentalfantasia sets the stage as Rael, the protagonist of Genesis’ 1974masterpiece The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway, embarks on anunforgettable journey.I used to think this song was about my life; recently,however, I concluded it could just as easily describe meteorites,in their final encounter with Windshield Earth. This column isabout both of those things.The spotlight flash that signalled the end of the roadfor the Buzzard Coulee meteorites marked the beginning ofan unforgettable personal road trip. I was sitting in my livingroom working on my laptop computer when it caught my eyeout the picture window. I looked up and saw a second, brighterflash, then a couple more in rapid succession just above theeastern horizon, about 95-100° azimuth, dropping to only5-10° above the horizon at that point (luckily for me, as thesky view from my couch is restricted from azimuth 90-120,and only about 25° altitude). It was an intense orange colourreminiscent of flickering firelight, easily brighter than the fullMoon. There was broken cloud on the distant horizon that thefireball had clearly dropped behind, suggesting a distance inthe order of hundreds of kilometres. After all the road tripschasing meteors, the best one I’ve ever seen came to me.The bolide was observed by thousands, with reportsranging from Fort McMurray to Montana to Manitobaproviding a first rough triangulation of what was surely a fallzone. In Alberta’s Capital Region it occurred an hour aftersunset with commuter traffic at its peak. Just within the RASCpopulation, Edmonton Centre members Yves Lamarre, TimDixon, Geoff Robertson,Greg Scratchley, andDave Cleary all sentfirst-person accounts.Alister Ling did us allone better by capturingthe event on his allskycamera, and hisvideo was already beingshown on the six o’clocknews, one of severalupdates providedwithin the news hour.Meanwhile,reports poured infrom all over, withswitchboards lightingup at universities,Figure 1 — Ellen Milley of theUniversity of Calgary discoveredmore than just meteorites in a fishpond near Lone Rock, Sask. She alsofound herself something of a mediadarling, in a fish bowl of publicity.Here photographers compete for thebest close-up.science centres, media outlets, even 911. Over 400 reports werefiled at the Web site of the Meteorites and Impacts AdvisoryCommittee (MIAC), an “unprecedented” response in thelong and distinguished experience of Dr. Alan Hildebrand,Coordinator of the Canadian Fireball Reporting Centre and,it turned out, exactly the right person to receive and interpretthose reports.I happened to be instructing an adult astronomy course atTelus World of Science Edmonton (TWoSE) that very evening.The phones were ringing off the hook as I arrived, still vibrating,about an hour after the fireball. Before giving my own first-handaccount, I polled the class, and, sure enough, one member hadseen the fireball proper and a couple of others the bright flashthat lit up the entire sky. A local TV station had sent a camera,so we two gave our own eyewitness accounts; later I heard froman old friend who had seen my interview on CNN!And then, silence. There was talk of an ongoing searchby Dr. Hildebrand and his crack team from the University ofCalgary, but no reports of a find and no appeals to the amateurcommunity for help in the search. By Wednesday of the followingweek, Frank Florian, TWoSE’s Director of Space Sciences,amateur meteorite aficionado and personal friend, decided toconduct his own field trip in the general area. Frank invited meto ride shotgun on a two- or three-day journey, in a volunteercapacity, but with expenses paid. How could I refuse?The plan was to interview some of the many eyewitnesseswho had phoned in to the science centre and collect some videofootage of their descriptions of the event for a possible futureApril / avril 2009JRASCCelebrating the International Year of Astronomy (IYA2009)79