Space "Gold rush" + note

Fellow stalkers I am sorry for the lack of updates. My grandmother is in the hospital sick with pneumonia. I will try to update as much as possible!Thanks!

   Scientists are on an epic treasure hunt for meteorite fragments from a spectacular fireball that lit up the daytime sky over California last month.

The space rocks came from a minivan-size asteroid that plunged through Earth's atmosphere and exploded into a dazzling daytime fireball over California and parts of Nevada on April 22. Meteorite fragments were scattered around Sutter's Mill, an old sawmill in Coloma, Calif. — the same region where the first gold nugget was found, triggering the Gold Rush of 1848.

Now, NASA has a meteorite rush on its hands, one just as exciting as the California's Gold Rush, the agency said.

Scientists and meteorite hunters have descended on the area in hopes of finding precious space rocks that may contain clues about the solar system's history, as well as the origins of molecules that support life.

Fragments from the so-called Sutter's Mill Meteorite fell to Earth on April 22 at 7:51 a.m. PDT (10:51 a.m. EDT). At least one space rock landed in a horse pasture outside of Lotus, Calif., in the Sierra Nevada mountains, according to NASA officials. Merv de Hass, who owns the farm, found the meteorite, but has since donated it to NASA.
"If I could contribute to science in some small way, then that would be great," de Hass said in a statement. "I'm looking forward to the results." [Photos: Fireball Drops Meteorites on California]
The de Hass family has let NASA researchers comb the land for more fragments.
"I feel like I have done a service to my country," said Eugena de Haas, who lives on the land where the meteorite was found.

The meteorite found by de Hass is very rare, and scientists are interested in studying it because it could contain molecules that explain how the building blocks of life on Earth may have been delivered from space, agency officials said.

Piecing together clues about the meteor could also help astronomers understand the early solar system and how the planets formed.

"This is among the most chemically primitive meteorites," Greg Schmidt, deputy director of the NASA Lunar Science Institute (NLSI), said in a statement. "It's like asking 'how did life on Earth begin?' and then having a fossil fall right in your back yard. This is exciting stuff — who knows what's inside? The Sutter's Mill Meteorite could be the most profound sample collected in over 40 years."

Peter Jenniskens, a meteor astronomer with the SETI Institute, is working with the NLSI and is leading the search. As he finds the meteorites, Jenniskens is making note of their exact location, so that the science team will be able to better track how the meteorites fell to Earth.

But the space rock is a rare carbonaceous chrondrite, which decomposes quickly in damp conditions, so the scientists are hoping to locate any other specimens before they are ruined.

"I am grateful this meteorite was found quickly," Jenniskens said. "We need to recover as much material as possible from the damp environment before weather affects the rocks too badly."

To help with the search, a helium-filled zeppelin flew slowly over the area with a trained group of observers to relay potential coordinates for ground teams to investigate. The zeppelin, which is owned and operated by Airship Ventures, carried a high definition camera, and observers used binoculars and cameras to spot possible impact sites.

"I suspect this is the first time in history that anyone has searched for meteorites with an airship," Schmidt said.

So far, the meteorite found by the de Haas family is one of the largest fragment found, but the meteorite search is expected to continue for the next few months, NASA officials said.

"The de Haas family has welcomed NASA's involvement with open arms," NLSI director Yvonne Pendleton said in a statement. "I want to express my personal gratitude to them. They should be commended for their contribution to scientific discovery."

Meteorite from Fireball

In what must be a meteorite-hunting first, a team of scientists took a zeppelin out Thursday (May 3) to search for fragments from a rare daytime fireball that exploded over California last month.
The huge airship Eureka took off from McClellan Park airfield in Sacramento around 12:45 p.m. PDT (3:45 p.m. EDT; 1945 GMT) carrying six researchers from NASA and the Search for Extreterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) Institute.
As the zeppelin cruised over the foothills of California's Sierra Nevada mountains at an altitude of about 1,000 feet (300 meters), the scientists scanned the ground for any signs of recent impact craters. Their aim: to find fragments of the minivan-size space rock that slammed into Earth's atmosphere on April 22.
Researchers are eager to get their hands on these meteorites, because they think the parent asteroid was a rare and primitive type called a carbonaceous chondrite. Such space rocks are typically packed full of organic molecules — carbon-based compounds that are the building blocks of life as we know it.

"It's a type of meteorite you'd like to have as an origin-of-life researcher," said Peter Jenniskens of

Picture of the day

Today's picture of the day is of the 2011 super moon in honor of tomorrow's super moon (see post below.) Well anyways here i hope you like it!

Super Moon!

The biggest full moon of the year, a so-called "supermoon," will take center stage when it rises this weekend, and may interfere with the peak of an annual meteor shower created by the leftovers from Halley's comet.

The supermoon of 2012 is the biggest full moon of the yearand will occur on Saturday (May 5) at 11:35 p.m. EDT (0335 May 6), though the moon may still appear full to skywatchers on the day before and after the actual event. At the same time, the annual Eta Aquarid meteor shower will be hitting its peak, NASA scientists say.

"Its light will wash out the fainter Eta Aquarid meteors," NASA meteor expert Bill Cooke of the Marshall Space Flight Center told SPACE.com in an email. Still, Cooke said there's a chance that the brightest fireballs from the meteor display may still be visible.

A supermoon occurs when the moon hits its full phase at the same time it makes closest approach to Earth for the month, a lunar milestone known as perigee. Scientists also refer to the event as a "perigee moon," according to a NASA video on the 2012 supermoon.

That's exactly what will happen on Saturday, when the moon will swing within 221,802 miles (356,955 kilometers) of Earth — its closest approach of the entire year. Because the moon's orbit is not exactly circular, there is a 3-percent variation in its closest approaches to Earth each month. The average Earth-moon distance is about 230,000 miles (384,400 km).

With May's full moon timed with the moon's perigee, it could appear 14 percent bigger and 30 percent brighter than other full moons of 2012, astronomer Tony Phillips explained in a NASA video. There is absolutely no chance the supermoon will threaten Earth.

The last supermoon was in March 2011. At the time, it was the biggest and brightest full moon in 18 years. [Amazing Supermoon Photos from 2011]

While the moon's extra brightness during the supermoon may wash out some of the fainter Eta Aquarid meteors, all is not lost, Cooke said.

"Our fireball cameras have already detected four bright ones. So I would say that the odds are pretty good that folks can see a bit of Halley's Comet over the next few days, if they care to take the time to look," Cooke explained. "They will be the big and bright ones, fewer in number with a rate of just a few per hour, but they will be there."

Cooke anticipates that the 2012 Eta Aquarid meteor shower will peak at up to 60 meteors per hour on May 5.

The eta Aquarid display is one of two meteor showers created by dust from Halley's comet (the Orionid shower in October is the other). It occurs every April and May when the Earth passes through a stream of debris cast off by comet Halley during its 76-year trip around the sun.

The eta Aquarid meteor shower of 2012 actually began on April 19 and ends on May 28, but its peak is in the overnight period between Saturday and Sunday (May 5 and 6).

"Meteor watchers in the Southern Hemisphere stand the best chance of seeing any meteors," a NASA advisory from the agency's Jet Propulsion Laboratory explained.