A golf ball-sized fragment of the meteorite that lit up the skies of southern Ontario three weeks ago has been recovered in Grimsby, Ontario.
Astronomers from The University of Western Ontario released video footage, maps and images of the meteor in hopes of garnering leads in locating potential meteor to study. And it paid off.
The media attention following the release of the footage, which shows the meteor described as approximately 100 times brighter than a full moon, led a Grimsby family to connect the dots between the event and a smashed windshield of their sport utility vehicle.
The Physics and Astronomy Department at Western has a network of all-sky cameras in southern Ontario that continually scan the atmosphere for meteors.
Phil McCausland, a postdoctoral fellow at Western’s Centre for Planetary Science & Exploration, says with the good camera records as well as radar and infrasound detections of the event, it will be possible to determine its orbit prior to collision with the Earth and to determine the energy of the fireball event.
“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,” he says.
For video footage, still images and site maps, visit https://aquarid.physics.uwo.ca/research/fireball/events/25sept2009/
