Possible Korean Meteorite Fall

[David Entwistle]

[Title edited to indicate "fall", not "find"].
There are a number of reports of a number of meteorites being found in Korea.

Korean Herald report.
YTN News 24 video.

[msg-meteorites]

Yes, i think there a few confirmed accounts of it landing in a green house, well a piece of it anyway, hopefully there will be more accounts coming through soon.

http://english.chosun.com/site/data/html_dir/2014/03/11/2014031101638.html

Cheers

Martin

[David Entwistle]

Hi Martin,

Yes, pictures of one fragment in the greenhouse here.

[David Entwistle]

There's a nice summary video here of the recovery of the two meteorites. Some good footage of the KOPRI (Korean Polar Research Institute) meteorite curation facility too.

[David Entwistle]

As mentioned, by Karmaka on the metlist, there are now images of sections and slices.

YTN 24 hours news channel report on the ongoing classification.

News report
Video

Other reports here and here.

[hetlaw]

hello,
there is one more video in high resolution. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uG5V139Kwkw


regards,

[David Entwistle]

Please find below a summary of the meteorite fall at Jinju, South Korea. This has been derived from several publicly available sources. Corrections and additions are most welcome.

A bright fireball was widely observed from across the Korean peninsula at approximately 20:04 Korean Standard Time (KST) (11:04 UTC) on the 9th March 2014. See here for collection of videos of the fireball. The first meteorite recoveries were made on Monday 10th March 2014 and Tuesday 11th March 2014. This YTN News 24 video report, from March 28th 2014, includes a map of the locations where meteorites have been recovered.

Locations

Locations small.jpg (21.74 KiB) Viewed 11695 times

Listed in order of recovery, with no claims for accuracy, I think these are roughly on the following coordinates:

1. 35° 15' 21.6" N 128° 8' 48.3" E
2. 35° 17' 49.4" N 128° 7' 20.6" E
3. 35° 18' 38.3" N 128° 6' 40.4" E
4. 35° 14' 40.7" N 128° 7' 34.8" E

All locations are displayed together here. Spread is 7.5 km x 2.2 km with major axis approximately NNW - SSE. The falls were recovered from the area to the north of the town of Jinju, South Gyeongsang Province, South Korea.

Recovered meteorites in order of recovery:

Meteorite 1 9.36kg. Recovered 10th March 2014. Holding institution KOPRI.
Meteorite 2 4.1kg. Recovered 11th March 2014. Holding institution KOPRI.
Meteorite 3 420g. Recovered 16th March 2014. Holding institution SNU
Meteorite 4 20.9kg. Recovered 17th March 2014. Holding institution SNU

Total known weight 34.78 kg. Preliminary classification: ordinary chondrite H.

This fall is only the fourth meteorite fall recorded in South Korea. Previous South Korean falls are recorded here and mapped here.

Note: The recommended coordinates of the 1947 Duwun fall are in the sea and are almost certainly innacurate. Recent Korean news reports describe the location of this 1947 fall as being "Goheung-gun, South Jeolla Province" possible closer to 34° 36' 40.4" N 127° 17' 5.9" E.

[David Entwistle]

Flight of the fireball.

Of all the videos posted, two are particularly useful, as they include the GPS-derived co-ordinates of the vehicle from which the video was recorded.

Video from vehicle 1 is taken travelling SSW south of Andong. The meteor appears to the upper right of the direction of travel and moves down towards the direction of travel, but not passing across to the left of the direction of travel.

Video from vehicle 2 is taken travelling SW north of Bucksam-Eup. The meteor appears to the upper right of the direction of travel and passes down to the left of the direction of travel.

In each case the visible flight is about five seconds long.

From these two videos, and the location of the fall, we can be sure that the meteor traveled on a path from north to south or possibly north-west to south-east. I feel it should be possible to calculate the path with some accuracy, but haven't figured out how, as yet.

[David Entwistle]

Thanks to Martin (Karmaka) for pointing out that Jinju is now officially classified.

Jinju 35°16.8’N, 128°7.4E
Gyeongsangnam-do, South Korea
Fell: 2014 Mar 9
Classification: Ordinary chondrite (H5)
History: A fireball was observed in many places in Korea on 2014 Mar 9, 20:04 (local time) and recorded by numerous car-dashboard cameras. The fireball traveled more than 100 km and disappeared above Gyeonsangnam-do, Jinju area. Many people heard the sonic boom. The next morning a farmer in Jinju found a 9 kg stone at the bottom of his paprika farm (plastic greenhouse). The stone made a hole in the roof of the greenhouse. The second (4.1 kg), third (0.4 kg) and fourth (20.5 kg) stones were found in next few days within 5 km of the first meteorite, bringing the total recovered mass to 34 kg. The stones were brought to either Seoul-NU or KOPRI, in which they were examined and confirmed as chondrites by Byeon-Gak Choi (Seoul-NU) and Jong Ik Lee (KOPRI)

State/Prov/County: Gyeongsangnam-do
Date: 2014 Mar 9
Latitude: 35°16.8'N
Longitude: 128°7.4E
Mass (g): 34000
Pieces: 4
Class: H5