Trying to find this fireball's trajectory by online coordination over the past two days has been quite an interesting and learning experience for me. I am reminded of the kids show "JoJo's Circus", which I used to watch with my daughter, where at the end of each episode someone asks "What did you learn today, JoJo?". (And JoJo would typically reply something like, "Well, today I learned that you shouldn't cover yourself in fish blood and then go swimming with sharks.")
1. Real Images are Needed
One needs real images to get a meteor trajectory. Anecdotal stories are just not accurate enough. This has been mentioned before but really became clear here. Anecdotal stories are important, though, for determining which quadrant of the sky the meteor would appear from different locations.
2. Cell Phones are Useless
Cell phones will only be useful for imaging fireballs when the meteor takes perhaps 10 seconds or more to cross the sky. That is about how much time it would take someone to take out their cell phone and start to image the fireball. This fireball took less than that -- about 5 seconds to the estimation of many -- so few if any images images of the meteor have come forward. There must have been hundreds of people who saw this meteor, and surely many of them had cell phones, but perhaps none of them were able to get a picture. I have now emailed the sole person who claimed to take a cell phone image of the meteor, but have not as yet heard a response. Meteors that take longer than 10 seconds to cross the sky could be imaged by cell phones but are exceedingly rare.
Note, though, that the Peekskill fireball has imaged by many people, including several videos, back in 1992. I now understand that a key reason for this was the long duration of the fireball. Here is a link:
http://meteor.uwo.ca/~pbrown/Videos/peekskill.htm
3. Web Cams are Useless
Many web cams now take only static images instead of streaming movies. Also, even in a first world country like the UK, web cams apparently just don't capture much of the sky much of the time.
4. Security Cams Still Might Work
It is still possible that security cameras are capturing a much larger fraction of the sky, a much larger fraction of the time, than personal cell phones. I note that the most popular amateur meteor video posted to YouTube was taken by a security camera attached to a police cruiser. See:
http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap081125.html
So, did a security video capture this UK fireball? I would bet that several have. We needed to find a way to get to those images. I have been thinking about this over the past day. Most security videos are private, unrecoverable, and hence lost, but there may be at least two sources of videos that might be recoverable.
Police videos. Just like the above image, police around the world now typically have videos in cars, headquarters, and parking lots. Emails to these police departments might shake some free. The police themselves might not want to sludge through all of the videos trying to find the ones with the fireball(s) though.
News media. I would guess that news media have their own security cameras covering entrances and parking lots. It therefore seems ironic that news centers are asking their readers for images, while they themselves might have better images. In this case, however, they might actually want to sludge through the videos looking for the fireball, since they themselves get to be the first to report on it. Emails to news media sites illuminated by the fireball might be able to shake these free. As time goes by, however, many have been erased.
5. Motivated People are Needed
I now think that a small team or teams -- perhaps only two to five people per team -- should be recruited beforehand to spring into action when a fireball has been reported. These teams could then figure out which video cameras might have seen the event, and contact those organizations as soon as possible to get at those videos before they are overwritten. For motivation, two teams could be created that would then compete against each other.
- RJN
Trying to find this fireball's trajectory by online coordination over the past two days has been quite an interesting and learning experience for me. I am reminded of the kids show "JoJo's Circus", which I used to watch with my daughter, where at the end of each episode someone asks "What did you learn today, JoJo?". (And JoJo would typically reply something like, "Well, today I learned that you shouldn't cover yourself in fish blood and then go swimming with sharks.")
1. Real Images are Needed
One needs real images to get a meteor trajectory. Anecdotal stories are just not accurate enough. This has been mentioned before but really became clear here. Anecdotal stories are important, though, for determining which quadrant of the sky the meteor would appear from different locations.
2. Cell Phones are Useless
Cell phones will only be useful for imaging fireballs when the meteor takes perhaps 10 seconds or more to cross the sky. That is about how much time it would take someone to take out their cell phone and start to image the fireball. This fireball took less than that -- about 5 seconds to the estimation of many -- so few if any images images of the meteor have come forward. There must have been hundreds of people who saw this meteor, and surely many of them had cell phones, but perhaps none of them were able to get a picture. I have now emailed the sole person who claimed to take a cell phone image of the meteor, but have not as yet heard a response. Meteors that take longer than 10 seconds to cross the sky could be imaged by cell phones but are exceedingly rare.
Note, though, that the Peekskill fireball has imaged by many people, including several videos, back in 1992. I now understand that a key reason for this was the long duration of the fireball. Here is a link: http://meteor.uwo.ca/~pbrown/Videos/peekskill.htm
3. Web Cams are Useless
Many web cams now take only static images instead of streaming movies. Also, even in a first world country like the UK, web cams apparently just don't capture much of the sky much of the time.
4. Security Cams Still Might Work
It is still possible that security cameras are capturing a much larger fraction of the sky, a much larger fraction of the time, than personal cell phones. I note that the most popular amateur meteor video posted to YouTube was taken by a security camera attached to a police cruiser. See: http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap081125.html
So, did a security video capture this UK fireball? I would bet that several have. We needed to find a way to get to those images. I have been thinking about this over the past day. Most security videos are private, unrecoverable, and hence lost, but there may be at least two sources of videos that might be recoverable.
Police videos. Just like the above image, police around the world now typically have videos in cars, headquarters, and parking lots. Emails to these police departments might shake some free. The police themselves might not want to sludge through all of the videos trying to find the ones with the fireball(s) though.
News media. I would guess that news media have their own security cameras covering entrances and parking lots. It therefore seems ironic that news centers are asking their readers for images, while they themselves might have better images. In this case, however, they might actually want to sludge through the videos looking for the fireball, since they themselves get to be the first to report on it. Emails to news media sites illuminated by the fireball might be able to shake these free. As time goes by, however, many have been erased.
5. Motivated People are Needed
I now think that a small team or teams -- perhaps only two to five people per team -- should be recruited beforehand to spring into action when a fireball has been reported. These teams could then figure out which video cameras might have seen the event, and contact those organizations as soon as possible to get at those videos before they are overwritten. For motivation, two teams could be created that would then compete against each other.
- RJN