The Campo del Cielo meteorite crater field in Argentina contains at least 20 small meteorite craters, but a recent review of the field data and a remote sensing study suggest that there may be more. The fall occurred~4000 years ago into a uniform loessy soil, and the craters are well enough preserved so that some of their parameters of impact can be determined after excavation. The craters were formed by multi-ton fragments of a type IA meteoroid with abundant silicate inclusions. Relative to the horizontal, the angle of infall was~9°. Reflecting the low angle of infall, the crater field is elongated with apparent dimensions of 3 x 18.5 km. The largest craters are near the center of this ellipse. This suggests that when the parent meteoroid broke apart, the resulting fragments diverged from the original trajectory in inverse relation to their masses and did not undergo size sorting due to atmospheric deceleration. The major axis of the crater field as we know it extends along N63°E, but the azimuths of infall determined by excavation of Craters 9 and 10 are N83.5°E and N75.5°E, respectively. This suggests that the major axis of the crater field is not yet well determined. The three or four largest craters appear to have been formed by impacts that disrupted the projectiles, scattering fragments around the outsides of the craters and leaving no large masses within them; these are relatively symmetrical in shape. Other craters are elongated features with multi-ton masses preserved within them and no fragmentation products outside. There are two ways in which field research on the Campo del Cielo crater field is found to be useful. (I) Studies exist that have been used to interpret impact craters on planetary surfaces other than the Earth. This occurrence of a swarm of projectiles impacting at known angles and similar velocities into a uniform target material provides an excellent field site at which to test the applicability of those studies. (2) Individual craters at Campo del Cielo can yield the masses of the projectiles that formed them and their velocities, angles and azimuths of impact. From these data, there is a possibility to estimate parameters for the parent meteoroid at entry and, thus, learn enough about its orbit to judge whether or not it was compatible with an asteroidal origin. Preliminary indications are that it was. Campo del Cielo is a IA iron meteorite and Sikhote-Alin, an observed fall, is a lIB iron meteorite in Wasson's classification. The Sterlitamak iron, also an observed fall, is a medium octahedrite in the Prior-Hey classification. It would be interesting to compare their orbital parameters.
Gases emitted in the planetary boundary layer can be transported very efficiently to the free troposphere through vertical motion along a frontal surface. A mesoscale numerical model was used to simulate the vertical transport of a tracer by clouds during frontogenesis in a moist atmosphere (an evolving Eady wave) in order to illustrate such vertical transport conditions. It is shown that the efficient vertical transport of a tracer occurs only when clouds are present, either when a surface or an in-situ source is considered. Insoluble, partially soluble, and soluble tracers are studied in order to determine the relative importance of vertical transport and scavenging on their redistribution.
The possible masses and velocities at entry of the Crater 9 meteorite, Campo del Cielo, Argentina, were determined from the dynamic conditions at impact. The assumption of a hyperbolic orbit relative to the earth allows one to put an upper limit on the mass at impact. The dependence of the heliocentric orbital parameters on the hour of entry is also studied. In particular, an entry time of between 0500 and 1600 UT would guarantee an origin in the solar system for all values of the initial mass being considered.
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