The Night Sky Guy

Zeroing in on Meteor Fall Zone

click to enlarge; Hamilton Cam

Update October 13: A veteran meteorite hunter from Buffalo, NY got his hands on some local doppler radar data of the September 25th Ontario fireball and has created a streetmap of where meteorite recovery may be most promising.  Check out the new, more precise localized hunt zone. Tip of the hat to spaceweather.com for this report.

Researchers at University of Western Ontario have a hunch that the September 25th Fireball seen in Ontario and Ohio may have rained down several kilograms of fragments. It was also clearly caught on all seven of the university’s all sky cameras. Check out the most spectacular footage from the Hamilton camera – you can see a bright light show right over the city. Watch carefully, at the end of the film you can see the fireball break up into individual fiery pieces.  So now we know that their is a real chance of finding meteorites on the ground from this event….Here is what the UWO Meteor Physics Group is saying about the event and where you might look for pieces…

“The fireball was seen widely by observers throughout southern Ontario and adjacent areas. The fireball was first detected by Western’s camera systems at an altitude of 100km over Guelph moving southeastwards at 20.8 km/s. The meteoroid was initially the size of a child’s tricycle. At its brightest, the fireball was approximately 100 times as bright as the full moon. 

click to enlarge;projected meteor fall area near Grimsby, Ontario

Analysis of the all-sky camera records as well as data from Western?s meteor radar and infrasound equipment indicates that this bright fireball was large enough to have dropped meteorites in a region south of Grimsby on the Niagara Peninsula, providing masses that may total as much as several kilograms.

 

Researchers at Western are interested in hearing from anyone within 10 km of Grimsby who may have witnessed or recorded this evening event, seen or heard unusual events at the time, or who may have found possible fragments of the freshly fallen meteorite. Meteorites are of great scientific value. Note that, in Canada, meteorites belong to the owner of the land upon which they are discovered. If you intend to search, please obtain the permission of the land owner before searching on private land.

Meteorites may best be recognized by their dark and scalloped exterior, and are usually more dense than normal rock and will often attract a fridge magnet due to their metal content. In this fall meteorites may well occur in a small hole produced by their dropping into soil. Meteorites are not dangerous, but we request that any recovered meteorites be placed in a clean plastic bag or container and be handled as little as possible to preserve their scientific information.”

Phil McCausland, a postdoctoral fellow at Western’s Centre for Planetary Science & Exploration, is now working to get the word out amongst interested people who may be willing to see if they can spot any fallen meteorites.

“This particular meteorite fall, if any are found, is very important because its arrival was so well recorded. We have good camera records as well as radar and infrasound detections of the event, so that it will be possible to determine its orbit prior to collision with the Earth and to determine the energy of the fireball event,” says McCausland. “We can also figure out where it came from and how it got here, which is rare. In all of history, only about a dozen meteorite falls have that kind of record.”

 If you have questions, observations or possible meteorites from this Sept. 25th event, please contact:

http://aquarid.physics.uwo.ca/

e-mail: pmccausl at uwo.ca

You can find the more video from the other cameras in the region and even cool computer animation the researchers put together that show the trajectory of the incoming meteor as it entered the atmosphere on their official webpage.

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