The desert fireball network

Abstract

Meteorites contain a record of processes ranging from the pre-solar stellar evolution of our galactic neighbourhood, to protoplanetary disk formation and evolution, and the accretion and differentiation of planetesimals and protoplanets in the early solar system. But unlike geologists, planetary scientists must interpret this unique record with no spatial context to help them: with precise orbital data for only four samples, we don't really know where individual meteorites come from. Camera networks, designed to calculate orbits and fall positions of meteorites based on observations of fireballs, have been in operation for several decades but have recovered only a small number of samples - meteorites are very difficult to find in vegetated areas. We intend to remedy this problem by siting a network in a place where we already know we can recover meteorites - the Nullarbor desert of Western Australian. Our first camera was installed at a test site in Australia in October 2003 and has performed flawlessly since that date, taking images of fireballs, several large enough to have dropped meteorites.