Meteor Crater at Google Earth

My visit to the Meteor Crater site proved to be more educational.  For example, most people don't know that its proper name is The Barringer Meteorite Crater.  That's because the crater is an impact crater formed approximately 50,000 years ago by a meteorite impact, not a meteor impact.   A meteoroid is a boulder sized piece of space debris.  Once a meteoroid enters the Earth’s atmosphere and heads toward the planet’s surface, it begins to vaporize and glow.  The vapor trail is known as a meteor or shooting star.  If any piece of the meteoroid survives the trip through the Earth’s atmosphere and reaches ground, it is called a meteorite. 

Meteor Crater is approximately 70 miles northeast of Sedona a few miles off Interstate 40 in the arid Northern Arizona high desert (35 miles east of Flagstaff and 20 miles west of Winslow).  It is hard to image this dry, rocky landscape 50,000 years ago when it would have been covered with grasslands and home to wooly mammoths. 

The crater impact site is approximately 4,000 feet in diameter and 550 feet deep, with a circumference of 2.4 miles.  The rim of the crater was forced up by the meteorite impact by about 150 feet.  Visitors to the impact site must walk all the way up to the rim to get a view of the bottom. 

It is believed that the meteorite which made it was composed almost entirely of nickel-iron, was 150 feet across, weighed roughly 300,000 tons, and was traveling at a speed of 28,600 miles per hour.

The impact of the meteorite was so strong researchers believe it vaporized the surrounding area with a force comparable to an atomic blast of 150 Hiroshima bombs.  However, the blast was not strong enough to impact the Earth’s climate so the surrounding area re-vegetated after the impact.

Daniel Moreau Barringer (source: meteorite-times.com)

The Meteor Crater is also considered to be the first definitive proof of an extraterrestrial impact on the Earth’s surface.  In 1903 Daniel Barringer, a mining engineer from Pennsylvania, hypothesized that the crater was formed by a meteorite due to the iron and silica traces he found in the crater rim and surrounding areas.  Barringer bought the crater site with the hopes of finding a significant iron deposit below the surface to mine.   At the time it was also hypothesized by others that the crater was formed by a volcanic eruption.  In the 1960’s Dr. Eugene Shoemaker finally proved that the layering of minerals found at the impact site could only come from a meteorite impact, not a volcanic eruption as some had believed.  Many other meteorite impacts on Earth were confirmed afterward.

Today the Barringer family still owns and operates the crater site.  The site is home to an interactive museum and a variety of outdoor viewing stations and observation decks.  A 1,406 pound meteorite fragment, the largest ever found in the area, is also on display for visitors to view and touch.  Guided tours of the impact site are also conducted, leaving hourly from 9:15 a.m. until 2:15 p.m. and last about 1 hour, weather permitting.

The Meteor Crater Visitor Center is open daily. Visitation hours are as follows:  Memorial Day to September 15th: 7:00 AM to 7:00 PM; Rest of the year: 8:00 AM to 5:00 PM; Thanksgiving Day: 8:00 AM to 1:00 PM.  Closed Christmas Day.  Admission Prices:  Adults: $15.00 - Seniors (age 60 and older) $13.00 - Juniors (age 6-17) $6.00.  For more information visit:  www.meteorcrater.com.

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