Grimsby Meteorite

On the early evening of Sept 25, 2009, a brilliant fireball showing three major bursts was widely seen over southwestern Ontario, passing nearly overhead along the Guelph line and Burlington, heading towards Grimsby. Along with all the visual reports, the fireball event was recorded by a network of automated cameras, radar and infrasound sensors operated by the University of Western Ontario. The camera records and visual reports suggested that a number of fragments survived to reach the ground to the west and south of Grimsby, Ontario.

During the autumn of 2009, a Western-led field search was undertaken by volunteers in the projected strewnfield. The first recovered Grimsby meteorite hit the windshield of a parked vehicle and was collected as five fragments on the morning after the fall by Tony Garchinski, but was not recognized to be a meteorite until two weeks later. As of this writing, a total of 13 meteorites have been found by search parties and individuals, all in the west of Grimsby. In Canada, meteorites that fall on private property belong to the landowner.

Of the thirteen recovered meteorites, eleven were complete individuals, ranging in mass from 1g to just over 68g. They are beautiful, showing dark fusion crust (melted) surfaces that mark their passage as tiny individual fragments through the Earth’s atmosphere on Sept. 25th. On the inside, the meteorites are light grey stone, little changed since the beginning of the Solar System, speckled with small blebs of metallic iron that make them feel slightly `heavy’ and cause them to now show a bit of Earthly rusting.

Anyone who may have found a meteorite is encouraged to contact researchers at the University of Western Ontario to have an assessment made. Good luck!

For more information on the Grimsby meteorite fall event, please visit Western’s Meteor Physics Group site: http://aquarid.physics.uwo.ca

Phil McCausland,
Planetary Scientist at the University of Western Ontario
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