Related papers: Observation of metre-scale impactors by the Desert…
The population of Earth-impacting meteoroids and its size-dependent orbital elements are key to understanding the origin of meteorites and informing on planetary defence efforts. Outstanding questions include the role of collisions in…
Based on telescopic observations of Jupiter-family comets (JFCs), there is predicted to be a paucity of objects at sub-kilometre sizes. However, several bright fireballs and some meteorites have been tenuously linked to the JFC population,…
Small asteroids and large meteoroids frequently impact the Earth, though their physical and material properties remain poorly understood. When observed as fireballs in Earth's atmosphere, these properties can be inferred from their ablation…
Various meteor and fireball networks exist worldwide. Most data sets which include ground-based observational data of meteors are affected by biases. The larger and faster the entering meteoroid, the brighter is the produced meteor. Hence,…
Numerous decameter-sized asteroids have been observed impacting Earth as fireballs. These objects can have impact energies equivalent to hundreds of kilotons of TNT, posing a hazard if they impact populated areas. Previous estimates of…
There is an unceasing incoming flux of extraterrestrial materials reaching the Earth's atmosphere. Some of these objects produce luminous columns when they ablate during the hypersonic encounter with air molecules. A few fireballs occur…
We have analysed the orbits and ablation characteristics in the atmosphere of 59 earth-impacting fireballs, produced by meteoroids one meter in diameter or larger, described here as meter-scale. Using heights at peak luminosity as a proxy…
Meteoroids impacting the Earth on a daily basis are fragments of asteroids and comets. By studying fireballs produced during their disintegration in the atmosphere, we can gain information about their source regions and the properties of…
Temporarily Captured Orbiters (TCOs) are Near-Earth Objects (NEOs) which make a few orbits of Earth before returning to heliocentric orbits. Only one TCO has been observed to date, 2006 RH120, captured by Earth for one year before escaping.…
Every year, a few metre-sized meteoroids impact the atmosphere of the Earth. Most (if not all) of them are undetectable before the impact. Therefore, predicting where and how they will fall seems to be an impossible task. In this letter we…
Estimating the meteoroid flux density at centimetre to metre sizes is notoriously difficult. Yet it is an important endeavour, as these sizes represent the transition between small meteoroids that pose a risk to spacecraft, and the…
Comparing how an asteroid appears in space to its ablation behavior during atmospheric passage and finally to the properties of associated meteorites represents the ultimate probe of small near-Earth objects. We present observations from…
Objects gravitationally captured by the Earth-Moon system are commonly called temporarily captured orbiters (TCOs), natural Earth satellites, or minimoons. TCOs are a crucially important subpopulation of near-Earth objects (NEOs) to…
As fireball networks grow, the number of events observed becomes unfeasible to manage by manual efforts. Reducing and analysing big data requires automated data pipelines. Triangulation of a fireball trajectory can swiftly provide…
Large or even medium sized asteroids impacting the Earth can cause damage on a global scale. Existing and planned concepts for finding near-Earth objects (NEOs) with diameter of 140 m or larger would take ~15-20 years of observation to find…
Over the past decade there has been a large increase in the number of automated camera networks that monitor the sky for fireballs. One of the goals of these networks is to provide the necessary information for linking meteorites to their…
Fireball networks establish the trajectories of meteoritic material passing through Earth's atmosphere, from which they can derive pre-entry orbits. Triangulated atmospheric trajectory data requires different orbit determination methods to…
We report high resolution multi-station observations of meteors by the Canadian Automated Meteor Observatory (CAMO) recorded from June 2009 to August 2010. Our survey has a limiting detection magnitude of +5 mag in R-band, equivalent to a…
We present an analysis of surveying the inner Solar System for objects that may pose some threat to the Earth. Most of the analysis is based on understanding the capability provided by Sentinel, a concept for an infrared space-based…
Taurid meteor shower produces prolonged but usually low activity every October and November. In some years, however, the activity is significantly enhanced. Previous studies based on long-term activity statistics concluded that the…