[meteorite-list] Meteor 'Fireball' Caught on Video

From: Pete Pete <rsvp321_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Mon, 27 Oct 2008 23:15:04 -0400
Message-ID: <BAY141-W56844E57029C3410A5B339F8270_at_phx.gbl>

Hi Mike, and List,

Here's another link for this item: http://aquarid.physics.uwo.ca/2008_oct15.htm

It's not far from my home, so I've been watching that area's media online anxiously for any witnesses seeing the fireball or hearing the booms, or stones on their roofs...nothing!

If you check on the above link you can see on the map that the centre of the large, calculated fall area is near Fergus, Ontario.
Google Earth shows it to be an agricultural area too big to be properly searched without more info.

Regardless, since today had some sunshine and a day off for me, I drove slowly along the white/light gray gravel back roads looking for something black, and an easy visual scan on the huge, flat fields with binnoculars for black soil turned up from an impact.
Anything that landed will likely never be found.

The reason for this post is to advise the List of another GPS option to add to their gadget box.
While driving around, I used the "Microsoft Streets and Trips GPS 2008" program and antenna on my laptop to plan my route automatically mark the roads I'd already driven on, so I wasn't wasting effort.
Since the 2009 version was just released, you can get the 2008 box for about $50.00.

It turns your whole screen into a map.
Apparently it can be used with Google Earth, too, but I haven't ventured into that yet.
There are lots of extra functions that a small, dashboard GPS device doesn't have, and at a fraction of the price.
It gets high ratings on customer feedback online, and personally I have found it flawless for keeping the satellite signals acquired continuously.
It is a laptop road map, so it won't have the obvious advantages of a proper portable GPS unit.


A tool to consider.

Cheers,
Pete





----------------------------------------
> Date: Mon, 27 Oct 2008 14:27:11 -0700
> From: mpg444 at yahoo.com
> To: meteorite-list at meteoritecentral.com
> Subject: [meteorite-list] Meteor 'Fireball' Caught on Video
>
> http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/081024-fireball-meteorite.html
>
> Meteor 'Fireball' Caught on Video
> By SPACE.com Staff
>
> posted: 24 October 2008
> 04:11 pm ET
>
>
> A team of astronomers has caught on video a fiery meteor as it fell toward Earth.
>
> The meteor was spotted by the University of Western Ontario's network of all-sky cameras in southern Ontario that scan the sky for meteors. On Wednesday, Oct. 15 at 5:28 a.m. EDT (0928 GMT) seven of the cameras recorded a bright, slow fireball in the predawn sky.
>
> The astronomers of the University of Western Ontario Meteor Group suspect the fireball broke apart and dropped meteorites in a region north of Guelph, Ontario, Canada, that may total as much as a few hundred grams in mass.
>
> Meteors are fallen debris from a comet or other space rock. As the debris enters the atmosphere, it heats up and produces the brilliant streaks of light we sometimes call shooting stars. Though most meteors are destroyed during this process, some make it to the ground and are known as meteorites.
>
> "This event was a relatively slow fireball that made it far into the Earth's atmosphere," said Phil McCausland, a postdoctoral researcher in planetary science at Western. "Most meteoroids burn up by the time they hit an altitude of 60 or 70 kilometers (37 to 44 miles) from the ground."
>
> He added, "This one was tracked by our all-sky camera network to have penetrated to an altitude of about 37 kilometers (23 miles) and it slowed down considerably, so there is a possibility that at least one and possibly several small meteorites made it to the ground."
>
> By knowing the trajectory from the camera observations, the researchers can also track backwards to get the orbit of the object before it hit the Earth.
>
> "The meteorite was on a typical Earth-crossing asteroid-type orbit, so we also expect that it is a stony-type meteorite," McCausland said.
>
> In March, the network of all-sky cameras captured video of a meteor falling to Earth that may have crashed in the Parry Sound area of Ontario.
>
>
>
>
>
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Received on Mon 27 Oct 2008 11:15:04 PM PDT