As a boy growing up on Livingston County’s Ore Lake, Tony Licata loved to scan the night sky with his telescope, thinking how cool it would be to see a meteor from his own backyard.
Little did he know then that his dream would come true when an asteroid exploded over Livingston County on Jan. 16, 2018, creating a meteor that rained down in small pieces called meteorites over Hamburg Township’s Chain of Lakes.
Licata and his family were among the many who hunted around Hamburg Township for meteorites, and over the next few days, they found three.
Meteorites are the small surviving pieces of what starts off as a small asteroid, which is a chunks of rocky material or space debris that orbits the Sun. When these chunks are large, they’re described as planetoids; when they’re small, they are described as meteoroids.
When meteoroids enter Earth’s atmosphere at high speed and burn up, the fireballs or “shooting stars” are called meteors. When a meteoroid survives its trip through the atmosphere, breaks up and hits the ground, it’s called a meteorite.
Over the next few days, as people descended on Hamburg Township to look for the meteorites, Licata and his family found three pieces.
Licata will show those three pieces and share his deep knowledge of this unique event during a talk sponsored by the Hamburg Township Historical Society at 2 p.m. Saturday, Jan. 14, at the township’s Senior Community Center, located at 10407 Merrill Road in Hamburg.
Admission is free to members of the historical society, with a charge of $5/person for non-members. Tickets will be available at Eventbrite.com and at the door. Note that the talk will be aimed at adults but also appropriate for children of middle school age and older.
