These 18 feet beryl crystals were exposed in 1928 -Īlthough the Bumpus quarry wasn't around when the Andover meteorite fell, there's still a cosmic connection with these giant beryl crystals which vastly predates the formation of meteorites. This from Beryl at Mount Mica, Maine, Hurlbut & Wenden, 1951Ī more substantial occurrence of beryl was unearthed from the nearby Bumpus Quarry. Also found in the pegmatite were beryl crystals, and five (considerably more rare) beryllium minerals. Mica are not the subject of this post however.
Mount Mica Quarry has been producing gemstones from the eighteen twenties to the present day. With this assumption, the daytime fireball of the Andover meteorite would easily have been visible from Paris, a small town 28 miles from Andover. For the sake of holding this shaky post together with the most tenuous of links, I'm hoping the reader will assume that the day was cloudless. Ward, 1902Īt this point I'd like to point out that there is no evidence concerning cloud cover on the fifth of August '98.
The image above is of the 1972 Great Daylight Fireball which just skimmed the atmosphere, and didn't rain down meteorites as at Andover, Maine in 1898 -įrom Description of Four Meteorites, Henry A. Such an event produces a bolide, or fireball in the sky, visible for many tens of miles around, day or night. Atmospheric ram pressure began sharply braking the descent at around 50 miles above the ground, with the energy being dissipated by heating the air ahead white hot, and ablating the surface of the stone.Īt about 30 miles overhead, the atmospheric ram pressure would have been so great as to disintegrate the meteor, with fragments finally being slowed to the regular terminal velocity of a falling body. Traveling at around 50 times faster than Concorde, it plunged from frictionless space into ever thickening layers of air. On the morning of the fifth of August 1898, a large rock entered the atmosphere over Maine, USA.
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