Edge Rewrite
everything Source code View original
// HTMLRewriter · presentation

This page was redesigned at the edge.

Cloudflare fetched the original article and streamed it through HTMLRewriter to apply an entirely new visual system without rebuilding the source page.

// request.cf · coarse context

A page that knows where it met you.

Only coarse request metadata is shown. This demo does not display or persist visitor IP addresses.

Country
US
Cloudflare location
CMH
Connection
HTTP/2
Language
Not provided

Ray ID: a441ba53fc280ecd

Jump to content

Draft:Fireballs Aotearoa

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
  • Comment: In preparing this draft, I disclose that AI assistance was used as follows: I used AI to find references, particularly media mentions of Fireballs Aotearoa, which I then checked manually and individually. I also used it to create the wikitext from my edits in a Word document, and to tell me how to upload the wikitext. James R Rowe (talk) 08:14, 1 October 2026 (UTC)

Fireballs Aotearoa
FormationFebruary 2022
TypeCitizen science project; section of the Royal Astronomical Society of New Zealand
Region served
New Zealand
Director
Steve Wyn-Harris (since July 2026)
Previous director
James Scott (October 2023 – July 2026)
AffiliationsRoyal Astronomical Society of New Zealand
Websitefireballs.nz

Fireballs Aotearoa is a citizen science network of meteor cameras in New Zealand. It is a section of the Royal Astronomical Society of New Zealand (RASNZ) and a collaboration between scientists at New Zealand's universities and volunteers who host cameras at schools, observatories and private homes.[1][2] The network records fireballs and uses triangulated camera data to work out where surviving meteorite fragments are likely to have landed. Its stated aim is to find New Zealand's next meteorite and donate any finds to New Zealand museums.[3]

Planning for the network began after recovery of the Winchcombe meteorite in the UK in 2021.[4][5] Jim Rowe,[6] who had founded the UK Fireball Alliance in 2018,[7] wrote an article for the September 2021 issue of the Royal Astronomical Society of New Zealand's "Southern Stars" journal to generate interest.[5] At that time, two Global Meteor Network (GMN) cameras were operational in New Zealand.[5] By the time Fireballs Aotearoa was founded in February 2022, six GMN cameras were operating.[8] 2022 saw several large fireball events which enabled Fireballs Aotearoa to gain media coverage and to grow,[9][10][11][12] with the result that by 2024 it had more than 120 cameras, one of the densest meteor-camera networks in the Southern Hemisphere.[13]

Data from the network's cameras led to the recovery of the Takapō meteorite in 2024, which was New Zealand's tenth known meteorite and the first in the country recovered by tracking a fireball.[2] It also led to the recovery of a meteorite in the Wairarapa in 2026, provisionally named Ruamāhanga, which was the country's eleventh.[14][8]

History

[edit]

Background

[edit]

Before 2024, only nine meteorites had been found in New Zealand, and only one of them, the Mokoia meteorite of 1908, had been seen to fall.[15][8]

The first cameras in New Zealand to join the Global Meteor Network (GMN) were built in 2021 by Hamish Barker in Nelson and Jeremy Taylor in Motueka. They were stations NZ0001 and NZ0002, and they triangulated their first meteors in July 2021.[8][5] Earlier that year, camera networks in the United Kingdom had tracked a fireball that led to the recovery of the Winchcombe meteorite.[4] In a September 2021 article in Southern Stars,[16] the RASNZ journal, Rowe used that recovery to argue for a similar approach in New Zealand. He urged New Zealand amateur astronomers to build relatively inexpensive GMN cameras, and estimated that New Zealand is struck by about four meteorites of 100 g or more each year. On that basis, he concluded that a freshly fallen meteorite could be recovered every couple of years if enough cameras were watching the sky.[5]

Formation and growth

[edit]

Rowe formed Fireballs Aotearoa in February 2022 with Professor James Scott of the University of Otago, Dr Michele Bannister and Professor Jack Baggaley of the University of Canterbury, camera operators Jeremy Taylor and Bob Evans and John Drummond of the Royal Astronomical Society of New Zealand.[8] Bannister proposed the name, Taylor created the website, Scott applied for funding, and Rowe set up the project's social media accounts.[8] Janis Russell created Fireballs Aotearoa's artwork.[8]

The network's cameras are mainly Raspberry Pi Meteor Station (RMS) units, the type used by the GMN. Each uses a Raspberry Pi computer and a low-light video camera.[15] Bannister organised a batch of ten RMS cameras in 2022, and Taylor taught the University of Canterbury rocketry club to build them. From mid-2022 to mid-2023, Scott's team in the Otago geology department built dozens more, funded by a Curious Minds grant that Scott had secured for the roll-out in Otago.[8]

Several large meteor events in 2022 generated a lot of media coverage which facilitated the rapid growth of the network. The events were:

  • A daytime fireball over Cook Strait on 7 July 2022 (about 1,800 t TNT equivalent, with a sonic boom heard across the South Island);[9][17]
  • A green fireball over Canterbury on 21 July 2022,[10] after which Professor Jack Baggaley wrote a piece[17] for "The Conversation" that was picked up by NZ and international media;[18][19][20][21] and
  • an Otago fireball on 28 August 2022 recorded by five cameras in the network, after which a meteorite hunt was organised near Middlemarch in Otago.[22][11][12]

In August 2022, Rowe donated New Zealand's first Allsky7 fireball camera to the University of Canterbury. In 2023, a grant from the Scientia Trust Planet Earth Fund paid for more Allsky7 and RMS cameras.[8]

Fireballs Aotearoa became a section of the RASNZ in October 2023, with Scott as its first director.[8]

In December 2023, observers in New Zealand and Australia watched for a new meteor shower, the λ-Sculptorids, which were predicted to originate from comet 46P/Wirtanen. Global Meteor Network cameras in New Zealand and Australia observed the shower, and 23 orbits of its meteors were measured.[23][3] In a 2026 press release, Fireballs Aotearoa said it has helped document a total of 37 meteor showers.[24]

Terry Richardson in Canterbury took over the building of camera systems for the rapidly-expanding network, and in 2025 handed this over to Matthew Wyn-Harris in Northland.[8] Since 2023 Steve Wyn-Harris has led the meteorite searches and media liaison, and Wyn-Harris took over as Director in July 2026.[8][14]

Organisation and operation

[edit]

Fireballs Aotearoa is a non-commercial, volunteer-run section of RASNZ, and people do not have to be RASNZ members to take part.[1][3]

The RMS cameras each cover a field of about 88° × 44° of the sky. Footage is uploaded automatically every day to the Global Meteor Network, and data are also shared with NASA's Cameras for Allsky Meteor Surveillance (CAMS) project.[1][3] The network also runs several Allsky7 cameras.[3]

When a bright fireball is seen, the group works out its luminous and "dark flight" trajectory using camera data and handles media enquiries.[13] If meteorite fragments may have survived, it organises a search for them.[1] Camera operators also use the images for other purposes, such as watching for aurorae and monitoring variable stars.[1]

Meteorite recoveries

[edit]

Takapō (2024)

[edit]

At 9:04 pm on 13 March 2024, a fireball crossed Otago and Canterbury. Four stations in the network recorded it. Peter McKellar, Jesse Stayte and Denis Vida computed its trajectory. The object entered the atmosphere at about 18 km/s and had slowed to 5 km/s before it stopped glowing at an altitude of 23 km.[13] Dark-flight modelling placed the strewn field south of Lake Takapō/Tekapo in the Mackenzie Basin. On 21 March a public search took place, and volunteer Jack Weterings found an 810-gram stone with a fusion crust soon after the search began.[13][25] It was New Zealand's tenth known meteorite and the first found in the country for about 20 years.[25]

The meteorite is an L5 ordinary chondrite.[26] Its name, Takapō, is recorded in the Meteoritical Society's Meteoritical Bulletin Database.[27] It went on display at Tūhura Otago Museum in Dunedin on 23 April 2026, in an airtight, oxygen-free case.[28]

Ruamāhanga (2026)

[edit]

At 10:26 pm on 28 July 2026, a fireball was seen across the lower North Island, from the Kāpiti Coast to Masterton. Network cameras first detected it about 90 km above the ground, travelling at about 14 km/s.[14] Working with scientists from Canada and Scotland, the group used wind speeds and the predicted mass and possible shapes of surviving fragments to estimate where a meteorite could have landed.[24] After several days of searching farmland north of Masterton, searchers had found four fragments weighing 8, 9, 12 and 40 g. Liam McGovern, a PhD student at Victoria University of Wellington, found the largest piece. The find was reported as New Zealand's eleventh confirmed meteorite. At the time of the announcement the meteorite had not yet been formally classified or named,[14] but it appears to be an ordinary chondrite and Fireballs Aotearoa has proposed the name "Ruamāhanga".[8]

Other observations

[edit]

The network's footage and trajectory analyses often appear in New Zealand news reports on bright fireballs.[29][30][31][32][33] For example, after a fireball and sonic boom were reported from the top of the South Island to Auckland on 29 March 2024, spokesperson Jesse Stayte appealed for eyewitness reports from the Whanganui–Waverley area.[2]

Ongoing media coverage

[edit]

New Zealand media have covered the network's fireball reports and meteorite recoveries widely, including RNZ, the Otago Daily Times, The New Zealand Herald and 1News.[12][11][2][25][28][14] Outside New Zealand, the Raspberry Pi magazine The MagPi ran a feature on the network in 2022 as a low-cost citizen science use of the computer.[15] The Takapō recovery was written up in the meteor observers' journal eMetN.[13]

See also

[edit]

References

[edit]
  1. 1 2 3 4 5 "Fireballs Aotearoa". Royal Astronomical Society of New Zealand. Retrieved 25 September 2026.
  2. 1 2 3 4 "Watch the skies – Have your cameras captured a meteor?". RNZ. 30 March 2024. Retrieved 25 September 2026.
  3. 1 2 3 4 5 "About". Fireballs Aotearoa. Retrieved 25 September 2026.
  4. 1 2 Rowe, Jim (31 May 2021). "Observing & recovering the Winchcombe meteorite". British Astronomical Association. Retrieved 30 September 2026.
  5. 1 2 3 4 5 Rowe, Jim (September 2021). "The Winchcombe Meteorite – from Mokoia to 2021 and Beyond". Southern Stars. 60 (3). Royal Astronomical Society of New Zealand: 3–7. Bibcode:2021SouSt..60c...3R. ISSN 0049-1640.
  6. ↑ "Jim Rowe". ORCID. Retrieved 29 September 2026.
  7. ↑ "About". The UK Fireball Alliance. Retrieved 29 September 2026. UKFAll was founded in 2018 under the leadership and encouragement of Jim Rowe, during the annual UK Meteor Network conference at the Natural History Museum London.
  8. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 "History". Fireballs Aotearoa. Retrieved 30 September 2026.
  9. 1 2 Scott, James; Bannister, Michele (11 July 2022). "Equivalent to 1,800 tonnes of TNT: what we now know about the meteor that lit up the daytime sky above New Zealand". The Conversation. Retrieved 29 September 2026.
  10. 1 2 "2022 07 22 Press Release" (Press release). Fireballs Aotearoa. 22 July 2022. Retrieved 29 September 2026.
  11. 1 2 3 "Hunt for rare meteorite begins after spectacular fireball over Otago". Otago Daily Times. 1 September 2022. Retrieved 29 September 2026.
  12. 1 2 3 "Race to find space rock near Dunedin: 'A loud sonic boom followed the fireball'". RNZ. 2 September 2022. Retrieved 29 September 2026.
  13. 1 2 3 4 5 Scott, James M.; Vida, Denis; et al. (26 March 2024). "New Zealand's meteor camera network leads to recovery of the Tekapo/Takapō meteorite". eMetN Meteor Journal. 9: 155. Bibcode:2024eMetN...9..155S. Retrieved 25 September 2026.
  14. 1 2 3 4 5 Day, Bianca (6 August 2026). "Spectacular fireball leads to recovery of NZ's 11th meteorite". 1News. Retrieved 25 September 2026.
  15. 1 2 3 Hattersley, Rosie (25 August 2022). "Fireballs Aotearoa meteor detector". The MagPi. Raspberry Pi Ltd. Retrieved 25 September 2026.
  16. ↑ "Issue Contents". Southern Stars. Royal Astronomical Society of New Zealand. Retrieved 30 September 2026.
  17. 1 2 Baggaley, Jack (1 August 2022). "Meteors seem to be raining down on New Zealand, but why are some bright green?". The Conversation. Retrieved 30 September 2026.
  18. ↑ Baggaley, Jack (1 August 2022). "The Conversation: Meteors seem to be raining down on New Zealand, but why are some bright green?". The New Zealand Herald. Retrieved 30 September 2026.
  19. ↑ Baggaley, Jack (2 August 2022) [Originally published in The Conversation]. "Meteors seem to be raining down on New Zealand, but why are some bright green?". RNZ. Retrieved 29 September 2026.
  20. ↑ Baggaley, Jack (2 August 2022) [Republished from The Conversation]. "Bright Green Meteors Seem to Be Raining Down on New Zealand, But Why?". ScienceAlert. Retrieved 30 September 2026.
  21. ↑ Paleja, Ameya (2 August 2022). "Meteors raining down in New Zealand are bright green. Here's why". Interesting Engineering. Retrieved 30 September 2026.
  22. ↑ "Press Release re: 20220828 event" (Press release). Fireballs Aotearoa. 2 September 2022. Retrieved 30 September 2026.
  23. ↑ Vida, D.; Scott, J. M.; Egal, A.; Vaubaillon, J.; Ye, Q.-Z.; Rollinson, D.; Sato, M.; Moser, D. E. (2024). "Observations of the new meteor shower from comet 46P/Wirtanen". Astronomy & Astrophysics (Letter to the Editor). 682. L20. arXiv:2402.07769. doi:10.1051/0004-6361/202449359.
  24. 1 2 "New Zealand's 11th Confirmed Meteorite Recovered From Wairarapa" (Press release). Fireballs Aotearoa. 7 August 2026. Retrieved 29 September 2026 – via Scoop.
  25. 1 2 3 Littlewood, Matthew (21 March 2024). "Team 'stoked' to find meteorite near Lake Tekapo". Otago Daily Times. Retrieved 25 September 2026.
  26. ↑ Lewis, John (15 April 2026). "Celestial treasure set for display". Otago Daily Times. Retrieved 25 September 2026.
  27. ↑ "Meteoritical Bulletin: Entry for Takapō". The Meteoritical Society. Retrieved 29 September 2026.
  28. 1 2 Tomsett, Ben (15 April 2026). "4.5 billion-year-old Takapō meteorite to go on display at Otago Museum". The New Zealand Herald. Retrieved 25 September 2026.
  29. ↑ Lineham, Lochlan (28 July 2026). "Fireball meteor lights up North Island sky, 'sonic boom' heard". The New Zealand Herald. Retrieved 30 September 2026.
  30. ↑ Horsnell, Jack (29 July 2026). "'Hell of a fright': Fireball seen streaking across North Island skies". 1News. Retrieved 30 September 2026.
  31. ↑ Horsnell, Jack (30 July 2026). "Another 'really beautiful' fireball seen streaking across North Island skies". 1News. Retrieved 30 September 2026.
  32. ↑ Satherley, Dan (24 September 2026). "'Bright as': Fireball lights up skies above Taranaki Maunga". RNZ. Retrieved 30 September 2026.
  33. ↑ Horsnell, Jack (24 September 2026). "Watch: 'Stunning' fireball lights up Taranaki sky overnight". 1News. Retrieved 30 September 2026.
[edit]

Category:Citizen science Category:Meteoroids Category:Astronomy in New Zealand Category:Astronomy organizations Category:Scientific organisations based in New Zealand Category:Scientific organizations established in 2022 Category:2022 establishments in New Zealand

Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Draft:Fireballs_Aotearoa&oldid=1377819600"