Meteorite fragments come down over Viñales, Cuba

[gary]

Several news services are running reports that meteorite fragments
have come down over the town of Viñales, Cuba.

A bright flash was seen over Florida followed by a loud sonic boom over
the Pinar del Rio region of western Cuba.

There are reports of glass being shattered but nobody was injured.

Several images are appearing on the web of rock fragments, some of
which may be from the meteorite.

The meteor was also detected by the GOES-16 Lightning Mapper satellite.

Story :-
https://www.gizmodo.com.au/2019/02/space-rock-hits-cuba/

Story :-
https://www.local10.com/news/cuba/cuban-scientists-confirm-meteorite-made-impact-in-vinales

On a personal note, I spent some time in Viñales in 2015 (snapshot below).
A beautiful rural town and the region is famed for its cigar tobacco (snapshot below).

Just east of here are where the Soviet missile launchers were erected
during the Cuban missile crises.

Just as well the meteorite landed today rather than in October 1962,
as otherwise it may have triggered a global nuclear war.

[gary]

Webcam footage at Fort Myer, Florida, caught the bolide around 13:17
local time as it descended toward western Cuba :-

https://twitter.com/ScottWx_TWN/status/1091553019710210048

[gary]

In a Feb 4th article at CNET, Eric Mack writes :-



To provide some sense of how much energy 1400 tons of TNT
produces, the Hiroshima bomb was some 15,000 tons, so the Cuban
event was about 9% of that.

The GBU-43/B MOAB (Mother Of All Bombs) which was dropped in
Afghanistan and is said to be the most powerful non-nuclear weapon in
the American arsenal has a yield of 11 tons of TNT, so the Cuban event
was equivalent to about 127 MOAB bombs.

So the explosion over Cuba would certainly get your attention!

The Tunguska event was in a different league again, with a blast
estimated to be equivalent to 1 Megaton.

The largest hydrogen bomb ever detonated had a yield of about 50 Megatons.
There are estimated to be between 10,000 to 15,000
H-bombs at the moment in the world. Given there are about 4037
cities in the world with populations over 100,000 people, there will
be enough H-bombs to share around with just about everyone you know.

Article here :-
https://www.cnet.com/news/nasa-fireball-over-cuba-exploded-with-force-of-over-a-ton-of-tnt/

JPL Fireball and Bolide Data Reported by US Government Sensors (15-Apr-1988 to present), with map, an interesting web page in itself :-
https://cneos.jpl.nasa.gov/fireballs/

[gary]

Article here :-
https://earthsky.org/space/chelyabinsk-cuba-meteor-connection


Meteor trajectory determination software :-



https://github.com/seap-udea/MeteorTrajectories


Paper (free) "Can we predict the impact conditions of meter-sized meteoroids?"
by Zuluaga et. al.:-
https://arxiv.org/abs/1902.03980

[Suzy]

Interesting facts, thanks Gary.

[multiweb]

https://earthsky.org/todays-image/photo-cuba-meteor-feb-1-2019-from-air

[gary]

Thanks Marc!

Wow! :thumbsup: