©  Meteors, Meteorites and Shooting Stars        

Star light star bright first star I see to night I wish I may I wish I might have the wish I wish tonight.

       When we were kids we would lie on our backs looking up at the stars waiting for a shooting star to cross the heavens. Some would shoot across most of the sky and others would have a small tail but what ever shooting star we would see we would repeat the star light star bright wish.  When I was about seven years old I went over to our Neighbors yard it was about 8:15 pm on a Wednesday night. We had just had our evening dinner.  I was  laying in the grass on my stomach looking south up into the sky when suddenly a bright blue light appeared all around me and as I looked to the south I saw a bright blue fire ball traveling across the sky from east to west. The ball or sphere seemed as large as the full moon at night. A bright blue tail followed the falling object across the sky. Then suddenly I herd a large sound like explosions far into the distance. I got up and rubbed my eyes not believing want I had just seen.  For a child of seven this was a most memorable and exciting experience and one I shall never forget and even to this day I can see the whole thing in my minds eye. I herd the next day that many people all over the westerns states had herd and seen the meteor to.

    After I had become an adult and was about twenty nine years of age I was taking a break at work and we were on the east side of our building which gave us a good view of the Wasatch Mountains just east of Salt Lake City. Suddenly during the day time a meteor crossed the sky going from south to north leaving a tail behind it. It was not quite as spectacular as the meteor I had see as a child but it was fun to see it in the day time.

    Because of seeing these meteors I have become very interested in collecting them. Recently I have obtained a meteorite from Argentina and one from china and one from meteor crater in Arizona. Many scientists believe that a large meteor impact at the Yucatan peninsula was responsible for the extinction of the dinosaurs at the end of the cretaceous period. Also known as the KT boundry.  All one has to do is look at pictures of mars or the moon to know that it is very possible that this occurred. Many impact sites are found all over the earth but because of the earths dynamic geology many are erased over eons of time. The best example of a meteor crater on earth lies in Arizona. Upheaval dome in Utah is a much larger crater at 10 km in diameter but much less disernable.

    Keep looking to the heavens at night and one day you to can wish upon a star

  The above picture shows the location (39 Deg 30 min N lat. and 112 Deg 54 min w long.) of the Drum Mountain Metorite found onseptember 24, 1944 by Yoshio Nishimoto and Akio Ujihoro the meteorite weighed 1164 Lbs. and is the eight heaviest found in the US

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