Fireball48 Sign-up and Alert Page

[RJN]

To sign-up for the Fireball48 Network, please sign-up for The Asterisk (this very online bulletin board), come back to this page, and then click "Subscribe topic" at the bottom. Then whenever anyone posts a new Fireball48 Alert to this page, you will receive an email. You can then come back to this page, scroll down to find this latest Fireball48 alert, follow that link, and then see if you can help.

To post a Fireball48 Yellow Alert, just Reply to this post on this page. Anyone signed up to the Asterisk can do it. A moderator will shortly check your Reply. The moderator may then issue a Red Alert if the lead appears sufficiently interesting.

The Fireball48 network is a "virtual citizen science flash mob" who come together briefly to help find videos and images of recently occurring fireballs. The purpose of finding them is so that the comet or asteroid of origin can be found, and so that the place the meteor hit the Earth can also be found.

A "Yellow Alert" will mean that we are trying to assess whether a sighting was an actual fireball and whether a flash-mob Fireball48 network could reasonably help find useful images and videos. If not, the "Yellow Alert" will be canceled. If so, a "Red Alert" will be declared and the game will be on. The Fireball48 name indicates that it is likely that the first 48 hours after a bright fireball occurs will be the most crucial time period, so if you are active in a Fireball48 Red Alert you might be in for quite an adventure over that time.

A useful background post about the Fireball48 network is here:
http://asterisk.apod.com/viewtopic.php?f=32&t=22116

The first Fireball48 "Red Alert" (defacto) was for a fireball over the UK on December 2010 is recorded here:
http://asterisk.apod.com/viewtopic.php?f=32&t=22242
Unfortunately, not enough information was recovered to track that fireball, but in my opinion we were close!

- RJN

[Skyboarder]

Hi there,

I registered today to this very website in order to help "The FIREBALL48 Meteor Investigation Network" (I'm located close to Paris, France, and my parents live in the Southern Alps of France close to the darkest nightsky of Europe), though I couldn't find the aforesaid "Subscribe topic" button you talked about...
Willing to help,

Skyboarder