Meteorite or Space Junk?

Big boom heard and felt at approximately 2.55pm, Tuesday 12th September 2006.

• Meteor captures South Island - TVNZ, 13 September 2006
• Meteorite wakes up Christchurch - NewsTalk
• Daddy of all booms' rattles south - NZ Herald September 13 2006 by Jarrod Booker
• Meteorite most likely cause of boom, observatory says - NZ Herald 4.30pm September 12 2006

Astronomy and space links

What's a meteorite?

"A natural object from space that hits the surface of the Earth or other planetary body" ("meteorite" A Dictionary of Astronomy. Ed. Ian Ridpath. Oxford University Press, 2003. Oxford Reference Online. Oxford University Press. Christchurch City Libraries. 12 September 2006)

• "Meteorite", James L. Gooding, et al., in AccessScience@McGraw-Hill, last modified: March 12, 2004
• Articles about Meteorites at Ebscohost
• Meteorites at Wikipedia

What's Space Junk?

We had information from the police via CCC call-centre that the explosion was a sonic boom caused by space junk entering the atmosphere. This was heard and felt from Invercargill to Blenheim. (3.17 pm, Tuesday 12th September 2006).

• 'Space junk' or 'space debris' is any artificial rubbish orbiting the Earth
• This could be anything from jettisoned rocket stages or satellite fragments down to loosened paint chips
• There may be over a million pieces of space junk currently orbiting the Earth. However, all but 9,000 of these are smaller than a tennis ball
• From the BBC - Science - Space Junk

• Space Junk Cleanup Needed, NASA Experts Warn, Stefan Lovgren for National Geographic News January 19, 2006
• Articles about Space Junk at EbscoHost

Last updated, 20th September 2006.