LPL has a long history and much experience with tracking space rocks. From astronomical surveys such as SPACEWATCH® and the Catalina Sky Survey to the Meteorite Lab to the OSIRIS-REx sample return mission, LPL knows asteroids and meteorites. Now, thanks to a generous gift from an anonymous donor, even more expert eyes will be trained on the sky over southern Arizona. A new collaboration between LPL, the Curtin University of Perth, Australia, and the Vatican Observatory will deploy a network of all-sky cameras throughout southern Arizona. Operating every night, the cameras will monitor the sky for incoming fireballs and help recover any meteorite dropping events in the area.

Phil Bland of the Curtin University operates the Desert Fireball Network which has been successful in the recovery of two observed meteorite falls, the Bunburra Rockhole eucrite in 2007, and an unpublished 2010 event in the Nullarbor Plains of Australia. The network consists of a number of semi-autonomous systems utilizing commercial DSLR cameras. Bland has agreed to provide 4 to 5 cameras for the Tucson area. The anonymous donation to LPL will allow the lab to match Bland’s contribution and build an additional 4 to 5 cameras.The first system will be shipped to Tucson next month for testing, with the remainder delivered throughout the year. Carl Hergenrother of LPL and Jean-Baptiste Kikwaya of the Vatican Observatory will operate the network with Bland.

With its clear skies and desert terrain, southern Arizona is a productive region for meteorite fall detection and recovery. The placement of the network across the region allows fireballs to be observed from multiple locations. By “triangulating” the path of a fireball from different locales, its atmospheric trajectory can be determined resulting in a better prediction of any fall sites and the object’s pre-atmospheric orbit around the Sun.

The new network will complement a group of three existing southern Arizona all-sky fireball cameras set up last fall on Mount Lemmon, Mount Hopkins, and Kitt Peak as a collaboration between NASA Marshall Space Flight Center, LPL, Vatican Observatory, Steward Observatory, MMT Observatory and the National Optical Astronomy Observatory.