The Sariçiçek Howardite Fall in Turkey: Source Crater of HED Meteorites on Vesta and İmpact Risk of Vestoids
Citation
Ünsalan, OZAN, Peter JENNISKENS, Qing-Zhu YIN5, Ersin KAYGISIZ, Jim ALBERS, David L. CLARK, Mikael GRANVIK, Iskender DEMIRKOL, Ibrahim Y. ERDOGAN, Aydin S. BENGU, Mehmet E. ÖZEL, Zahide TERZIOGLU, Nayeob GI, Peter BROWN, Esref YALCINKAYA, Tuğba TEMEL, Dinesh K. PRABHU, Darrel K. ROBERTSON, Mark BOSLOUGH, Daniel R. OSTROWSKI, Jamie KIMBERLEY, Selman ER, Douglas J. ROWLAND, Kathryn L. BRYSON, Cisem ALTUNAYARUNSALAN, Bogdan RANGUELOV, Alexander KARAMANOV, Dragomir TATCHEV, Özlem KOCAHAN, Michael I. OSHTRAKH, Alevtina A. MAKSIMOVA, Maxim S. KARABANALOV, Kenneth L. VEROSUB, Emily LEVIN, Ibrahim UYSAL, Viktor HOFFMANN, Takahiro HIROI, Vishnu REDDY, Gulce O. ILDIZ, Olcay BOLUKBASI, Michael E. ZOLENSKY, Rupert HOCHLEITNER, Melanie KALIWODA, Sinan ÖNGEN, Rui FAUSTO, Bernardo A. NOGUEIRA, Andrey V. CHUKIN, Daniela KARASHANOVA, Vladimir A. SEMIONKIN, Mehmet YEŞILTAŞ, Timothy GLOTCH, Ayberk YILMAZ, Jon M. FRIEDRICH, Matthew E. SANBORN, Magdalena HUYSKENS, Karen ZIEGLER, Curtis D. WILLIAMS, Maria SCHÖNBÄCHLER, Kerstin BAUER, Matthias M. M. MEIER, Colin MADEN, Henner BUSEMANN, Kees C. WELTEN, Marc W. CAFFEE, Matthias LAUBENSTEIN, Qin ZHOU, Qiu-Li LI, Xian- Hua LI, Yu LIU, Guo-Qiang TANG, Derek W. G. SEARS, Hannah L. MCLAIN, Jason P. DWORKIN, Jamie E. ELSILA, Daniel P. GLAVIN, Philippe SCHMITT-KOPPLIN, Alexander RUF, Lucille LE CORRE & Nico SCHMEDEMANN. "The Sariçiçek Howardite Fall in Turkey: Source Crater of HED Meteorites on Vesta and İmpact Risk of Vestoids". Manuscript Accepted For Publication in Meteoritics & Planetary Science (2019)Abstract
The Sariçiçek howardite meteorite shower consisting of 343 documented stones
occurred on 2 September 2015 in Turkey and is the first documented howardite fall. Cosmogenic
isotopes show that Sariçiçek experienced a complex cosmic ray exposure history, exposed during
~12–14 Ma in a regolith near the surface of a parent asteroid, and that an ~1 m sized meteoroid
was launched by an impact 22 ± 2 Ma ago to Earth (as did one third of all HED meteorites). SIMS
dating of zircon and baddeleyite yielded 4550.4 ± 2.5 Ma and 4553 ± 8.8 Ma crystallization ages
for the basaltic magma clasts. The apatite U-Pb age of 4525 ± 17 Ma, K-Ar age of ~3.9 Ga, and
the U,Th-He ages of 1.8 ± 0.7 and 2.6 ± 0.3 Ga are interpreted to represent thermal metamorphic
and impact-related resetting ages, respectively. Petrographic, geochemical and O-, Cr- and Tiisotopic
studies confirm that Sariçiçek belongs to the normal clan of HED meteorites. Petrographic
observations and analysis of organic material indicate a small portion of carbonaceous chondrite
material in the Sariçiçek regolith and organic contamination of the meteorite after a few days on
soil. Video observations of the fall show an atmospheric entry at 17.3 ± 0.8 kms-1 from NW,
fragmentations at 37, 33, 31 and 27 km altitude, and provide a pre-atmospheric orbit that is the
first dynamical link between the normal HED meteorite clan and the inner Main Belt. Spectral data
indicate the similarity of Sariçiçek with the Vesta asteroid family (V-class) spectra, a group of
asteroids stretching to delivery resonances, which includes (4) Vesta. Dynamical modeling of
meteoroid delivery to Earth shows that the complete disruption of a ~1 km sized Vesta family
asteroid or a ~10 km sized impact crater on Vesta is required to provide sufficient meteoroids ≤4
m in size to account for the influx of meteorites from this HED clan. The 16.7 km diameter Antonia
impact crater on Vesta was formed on terrain of the same age as given by the 4He retention age of
Sariçiçek. Lunar scaling for crater production to crater counts of its ejecta blanket show it was
formed ~22 Ma ago.
