[meteorite-list] Tracking Cameras in Australia Aim to Unlock Meteorite Mysteries

[Ron Baalke]

http://www.abc.net.au/local/stories/2013/11/12/3889197.htm 

Tracking cameras aim to unlock meteorite mysteries
By Eloise Fuss
Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC)
November 12, 2013

"The ones that people normally call shooting stars are often really really 
small, just sand grains that come into our atmosphere," explains Professor 
Phil Bland. "The bigger things that you see, the bright fireballs are 
from chunks of rock, those are meteorites."

Curtin University researcher Phil Bland is an expert when it comes to 
meteorites, but he's hoping a new project tracking meteors across the 
Australian sky will help uncover more about their mystifying origins.

"There's something like 50,000 meteorites now in collections around the 
world and people do a ton of science on those and go to great lengths 
to collect them. But we only really know where 14 or 15 of them out of 
that 50,000 come from in the solar system."

Mr Bland says they're getting closer to finding an answer. He has just 
returned from a research trip to the Nullarbor, as part of his project 
placing a network of meteor tracking cameras through regional and remote 
areas of Australia.

"Basically they'll be taking pictures of the night sky continuously, so 
we can track everything that comes through the atmosphere."

He said this work will cover about a third of Australia when it's done, 
and enable researchers to better identify where the meteorites originate 
from and land.

"If you imagine you've got a little triangle of cameras in different positions 
and they can see all the sky, they'll see that fireball from different 
orientations.

"You can triangulate exactly where it is in the atmosphere based on those 
observations."

Mr Bland said the project extends far beyond just collecting rocks, as 
meteors offer broader planetary science insights.

"The reason we started it is meteorites are the oldest rocks that we have," 
Mr Bland explained.

"They formed in the first few million years after the solar system itself, 
and so they can tell us things about how planets like the earth formed 
from dust and gas, and there's a whole load of questions that are still 
unanswered about that."

He said around ten sizable rocks per million square kilometres land in 
Australia each year, so in Western Australian that's around 20 rocks falling 
annually that are more than a kilogram in size.

"The rocks that fall to earth, some are stony, a lot like terrestrial 
rocks or basalt. A large number have little chunks of metal inside of 
them, and a few have solid chunks of iron, nickel and metal."

He's hoping the new camera system enables researchers to collect two times 
as many fallen asteroids, and consequently uncover more information about 
these intergalactic rocks.

"It's always a beautiful thing when you see a fireball come through the 
atmosphere and you're lying out there in the desert- you see one of these 
things and it just blows you away.

"But the science, knowing that came from out beyond the orbit of Pluto 
and hit the top of the atmosphere at 60km a second and formed 4.5 billion 
years ago, that adds to that wonder and I love that."

Mr Bland told ABC News a smart phone app is also being used to augment 
the camera network program. He said the university wants to engage any 
people interested in astronomy to use the Fireballs in the Sky app so 
they can record their own meteor experience and share the data.