[meteorite-list] Fall Patterns (& Latest Canadian Meteorite Find)

[Chris Peterson]

Each network had one recovery in about five years of operation. Is that 
miserable? I don't know. We've been running four years now, with no 
recoveries. Our equipment is better. Still, the problem of recovering 
meteorites from meteor data is a difficult one. Even if you know with 
perfect accuracy the trajectory of the meteoroid, and you have current, 
accurate wind data for all altitudes, there is still an uncertainty of many 
square kilometers in calculating the ground position. That is a lot of area 
to cover, typically by just a few people.

Personally, I'd consider one recovery every few years in a sparsely 
inhabited area pretty good.

Chris

*****************************************
Chris L Peterson
Cloudbait Observatory
http://www.cloudbait.com


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "AL Mitterling" <almitt at kconline.com>
To: "Robert Verish" <bolidechaser at yahoo.com>
Cc: "Meteorite-list Meteoritecentral" <meteorite-list at meteoritecentral.com>
Sent: Friday, July 15, 2005 11:28 AM
Subject: Re: [meteorite-list] Fall Patterns (& Latest Canadian Meteorite 
Find)


> Hi Bob, Steve and all,
>
> Steve #1 wrote: The Smithsonian and the Canadians, had
> miserable results with their "fireball image capturing
> networks" over the long time they spent trying.
>
> Without those results we wouldn't know that meteorites originated from the 
> asteroid belt. It was an impressive effort on their part. Perhaps with 
> modern equipment we could pin point a few falls better than they could do 
> back then with low sensitive films (low asa's) and bulky equipment. One 
> still needs to capture the bright fireballs then locate the fall to get 
> results. All of which make capturing falls with camera networks difficult 
> at best.
>
> --AL