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Top astronomy occasions for August 2025
From a planetary conjunction to a summer time meteor bathe, listed here are the highest astronomy occasions for August 2025.
- A cherry tomato-sized meteor struck a home in McDonough, Georgia, on June 26.
- Planetary geologist R. Scott Harris investigated the impression and picked up fragments of the meteorite.
- Thousands witnessed the meteor’s fiery descent, and it is one in all solely 29 present in Georgia.
When a meteor blazes in from outer house and hits a home, this uncommon occasion could be a loud and scary second. That’s what occurred in Georgia on June 26 when a meteor lit up the sky in a shocking streak of fireplace throughout daytime.
The meteor because it blazed towards the roof of a home in McDonough was in regards to the dimension of a cherry tomato earlier than impression, in response to R. Scott Harris, a planetary geologist and visiting researcher connected to the Department of Geology on the University of Georgia.
“There is a good chance this was still traveling many hundreds of meters per second, even up to a kilometer per second, when it was flying through the house,” Harris mentioned in a current interview.
“We put a (metal) rod all the way from the exterior hole, through an air duct, through insulation, the ceiling, and 10 and a half feet down to the floor,” he mentioned in regards to the post-strike investigation.
The home belonged to a younger couple with kids. While the opposite relations have been away, Harris mentioned the daddy was inside the home within the residence workplace. He was carrying a headset and seated about 14 toes from the meteorite’s impression.
“He said it was still incredibly loud, like a loud gunshot. … I think he simultaneously heard three different things. The collision on the roof, the collision on the floor, but in between, there was a tiny sonic boom as it dropped below the speed of sound. This thing is traveling so fast you can’t distinguish individual sounds,” Harris mentioned.
Harris, an knowledgeable within the discipline of meteorites and volcanoes on different planets, mentioned he and his daughter have been on a visit to the Pacific Northwest when he obtained a name in regards to the meteor occasion.
“I contacted Henry County and was very quickly put in contact with the emergency management director, who secured some of the pieces. The house owner was concerned about the damage and needed a report for insurance,” he mentioned. “That was nice because it preserved a pure chain of custody.”
Harris was able to later meet with the family, whose identity he withheld because they are “very private” and didn’t need curious folks displaying up at their residence.
“This was a unique opportunity to look at the dynamics of one the smaller ones going through a house,” said Harris, who was born in Athens and grew up in Winder, where his family has resided since the early 1800s.
Upon impact with the floor, the rock shattered into pieces ranging from the size of a lima bean to a sweet pea and even dust particles. The house owner has some pieces, and Harris has about 23 grams of fragments.
Harris said this meteor had been in orbit around the sun for millions of years before it entered the Earth’s orbit on that June day when its blazing path was captured on video and seen by thousands of people in Georgia and out of state.
There are an estimated 7,000 to 17,000 meteors that enter the Earth’s atmosphere every day, he said, but most are smaller and a lot fall into bodies of water such as the oceans. Only about 29 meteorites have been found in Georgia.
The Meteorite Association of Georgia reports on the meteorites found in the state, including a 154-pound meteorite found in 1940 in the Smithsonia community of Oglethorpe and a 219-pound meteorite found circa 1927 in Walton County.
Harris, who is an alumnus of the University of Georgia, plans to speak on what is now known as the McDonough Meteorite at a professional meeting at the Fernbank Museum in Atlanta in late August. He will show his pieces of outer space rock. Lectures on such topics attract the public’s interest, according to Harris.
“If you can’t engage people about volcanoes and space rocks, then you’re not trying,” he mentioned with a chuckle.
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