It took almost a week to find meteorites, including the Buzzard Coulee meteorite, from the fireball that blazed across the prairie sky in November 2008.
But now, thanks to new state-of-the-art all-sky cameras being installed in Western Canada that will allow for the automated detection of meteorite-dropping fireballs, it shouldn’t take more than a couple of days.
Chris Herd, a University of Alberta geologist who studies planets and their moons, explained that the advanced technology allows scientists to detect fireballs as they streak across the sky and triangulate the landing location of any meteorites that make it to Earth’s surface.
“The system is so good at narrowing the search area—to within a few hundred metres—that there exists the real potential to find samples within a couple of days, assuming the fall area is not so remote as to be inaccessible,” said Herd.
Continue reading at University of Alberta.
Image via University of Alberta.