Yesterday – on the hottest day of the 2022 – we had first light on our 360 degree all sky meteor observation camera deployed at the Jodrell Bank observatory site in Cheshire, UK. The new camera is the 2nd that the University of Manchester is working with (see here for our blog about the original camera working on the main university campus), and forms part of the SCAMP (System for Capture of Asteroid and Meteorite Paths) meteor camera network which is part of the French FRIPON camera network. In the UK the SCAMP network is one of the partners of the UK Fireball Alliance who coordinated the observation and recovery of the Winchcombe UK meteorite in Feb 2020.
The camera will automatically detect fireball events when meteoroids strike Earth’s atmosphere, and data collected will be used in coordination with the other UK camera network stations to calculate the orbits of the arriving objects, and to predict if they dropped a meteorite sample. Fireballs enter Earth’s atmosphere at incredible speeds – some 10 to 20 km per second and then they are rapidly slowed down and start to burn up through friction creating a bright streak which we can observe and track. The hope is that when the next event occurs, we will help find another UK meteorite fall event so that the sample analysis community can use newly arrived space rock to ask all sorts of interesting questions about the origins and evolution of planetary bodies in our Solar System.
The camera sits with a great view of two of the dishes – the larger Lovell telescope and the 42 foot telescope – at the spectacular Jodrell Bank Observatory, part of the Jodrell Bank Centre for Astrophysics, now a UNESCO world heritage site. The observatory has a fantastic newly designed visitor centre, which tells the story of the observatory and of the science of radio astronomy. Observations at Jodrell Bank were originally set up in the 1940s to look at cosmic rays from far off galactic sources, however, instead of cosmic rays, the radar equipment detected echoes from meteor trails in the upper atmosphere. Meteors became the primary research topic at Jodrell Bank in its earliest years. Thus, our new camera is carrying on the tradition of meteor observations this time using camera observations rather than radio waves.
A massive thanks to Andy Smedley, Jim Rowe and the FRIPON team for coordinating the camera setup. Also huge thanks to the Jodrell Bank team of Sarah Smith, Anthony Holloway, and Tim O’Brien who have helped on the local logistics to find the camera a home at Jodrell. Thanks to the Dept. of Earth and Environmental Sciences at the University of Manchester and the Royal Society for helping to fund the equipment.
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Links to meteor and meteorite science webpages
- FRIPON camera network: https://www.fripon.org/?lang=en
- SCAMP network: https://ukmeteornetwork.co.uk/SCAMP/
- UK Fireball Alliance https://www.ukfall.org.uk/
- Fripon camera in the UK: https://ukmeteornetwork.co.uk/news/first-fripon-camera-in-uk/
- Jodrell Bank meteor observations:
- History of the Jodrell Bank observatory http://www.jb.man.ac.uk/meteor/
- A nice talk on the meteor observation programme https://www.imo.net/imcs/imc2010/talks/Argo.pdf
- Book chapter on Jodrell Bank and the Meteor Velocity Controversy https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/1-4020-3724-4_7
- Jodrell Bank Centre for Astrophysics www.jodrellbank.manchester.ac.uk
- Jodrell Bank visitor centre www.jodrellbank.net
- Meteorite analysis in the UK https://ukcosmochemanalysisnetwork.wordpress.com
- UK Antarctic Meteorite recovery https://ukantarcticmeteorites.wordpress.com
Earth & Solar System 