Cameras for Allsky Meteor Surveillance (CAMS)

Later, more information was obtained from spaceborne observations of the dust cloud, and from the preliminary analysis of some of the many video records of the fireball and its dust cloud posted on YouTube. 16 cameras take spectra of magnitude +0 and brighter meteors captured in the CAMS network. CAMS presentations by Pete Gural (new CAMS Spectrograph) and Peter Jenniskens (CAMS results update). Using the wind conditions measured in Oakland International Airport at 0h UT on Jan 11, the fall area is north and south of the village of Tranquillity (with two "l") in California's Central Valley (see figure above).

Left: One year after the Novato meteorite fall, CAMS station 210 - College of San Mateo (Dean Drumheller) - catches another meteorite fall on video. Regina Rudawska presented results on meteoroid stream seaches in the first year CAMS data. January 17 fireball in an allsky camera image by Jim Collins at Chico, CA. 2013 January 17 Sierra Nevada fireball: Please report visual accounts of the fireball sighting here. Trajectory came from the East. 2013, February 15- This morning, an about 17-m sized asteroid impacted near Chelyabinsk with an energy of ~500 kt. From left to right: Dave Samuels, Quentin Nenon, Loren Dyneson, Beth Johnson, Rick Morales, Peter Jenniskens, Mike Koop, and Dean Drumheller. 2014, January 12 - The CAMS station at Fremont Peak Observatory also captured this fireball, which makes triangulation with the Lick Observatory record possible. 2013, Aug 12 - CAMS participants in the Bay Area meet at Fremont Peak Observatory during the 28th Annual Fremont Peak Star-B-Que to celebrate the detection of the first 100,000 meteors. It was also captured on the Skysentinel cameras at Stanford and Nevada city. Photo: Barbara. The fireball was widely reported on the American Meteor Society website. The beginning of the meteor trajectory is visible right of the bright flash that originated well below the field of view. 2013, January 17- Night turned briefly into http://cleveland.tribe.net/template/pub%2Coc%2CDetail.vm?topicid=9853f521-417b-46bc-8dfd-9a44 e429ebda&plugin=blog&inst=38266584 day over a wide area in California and Nevada at 5:21:44 a.m. North is to the right.

low-inclined orbit: inclination = 3.8 degrees 2013, March 9-25- Peter participates in fact finding mission by the Russian Academy of Sciences to Chelyabinsk. Peter Jenniskens also gave an invited review talk on the Sutter's Mill meteorite fall. The Richmond site can see Pete's East or West patches with a 25 degree elevation angle. Report visual accounts of fireball sighting here. Was tracked by CAMS camera 213 down to 60.9 km at Lat = 37.6475N Long = 122.6466W. Sunnyvale record of the January 17 fireball. This was a head-on collision with a small perhaps 1meter sized comet, rather than the glancing blow of a stronger asteroid. Bryant Grigsby reported that it caught his attention by the shadows it cast on a wall in front of him. CAMS has completed the

baseline meteor orbit survey and is now phasing into support of the meteor spectroscopy program. The potential impact area stretches from the northern coast of South America over the Atlantic to Africa, even over Sudan... Karen Randall described it as green, fragmenting towards the end. Yellow dots are the locations where meteorites were recovered. The meteor left the field of view at the bottom, only the beginning part is shown. For a few weeks, a total of 52 cameras were filming the night sky from this location (20 for the regular CAMS meteoroid orbit survey, 16 to capture meteor spectra, and 16 just for test purposes of the new network). Trajectory was shallow: inclined by 19.5 degrees with horizontal.

Arrived from a direction Right Ascension = 26.5 degree, Declination = +11.2 degrees, near the star o Piscium.

Map of glass damage in Chelyabinsk Oblast. Jack Baggaley of the University of Canterbury, a new two-station (16 cameras each) CAMS network has been developed for deployment in New Zealand. We are still looking for further confirmation of the impact from satellite observations. 2013, Oct 22- A bright fireball was seen by many in the Bay Area this evening at 19:54:03 local time (Oct 23 at 02:54:03 UT) in California. These sites show videos. 2013, November 6- Science published today a report on the Chelyabinsk meteoroid impact that describes the results from a Russian Academy of Sciences fact finding mission in the weeks after the impact, led by Dr. That is more than hundred times that of Sutter's Mill. Astronomer Dr. Calculations by Peter Jenniskens show that the meteoroid entered at 14.7 km/s, traveling at an angle of 40 degrees with the horizontal from 85 km (where it was first detected) to 68 km altitude (where it moved out of the field of view of the cameras). The network is rapidly reaching yields comparable to that of the CAMS network in California.

Short orbit: semi-major axis = 1.15 AU Very beginning of fireball captured in Lick Observatory CAMS camera 81 (bottom center). The camera layout is the same design by Mike Borden, operated with a power supply modified by Mike Koop. Moving towards Lake Tahoe, the small comet then penetrated to lower elevations where it fully disrupted in the atmosphere. News blog:

2013 October 22 Bay Area fireball: Dash-cam video by Mr. This is the start of a North Atlantic network, waiting for others to get up their cameras. [Images of event]

2013, October 28 - In a collaboration with Prof. The first in is that of station 213 (Dave Samuels in Brentwood), shown in the picture above. The coordinates for this object have been contributed to the minor planet center. Wes Jones in Belmont caught the beginning part of the fireball. Cameras for Allsky Meteor Surveillance (CAMS)

2014 January 10 Tranquillity fireball:

2013 February 16 San Francisco Bay Area fireball: 2013, December 12 - Prof. Dots are villages and towns in the area, marked red or orange when glass damage occurred. Two prospective remote sites are at Annapolis, MD, and Richmond, VA. Dave Samuels designed the scripts that make autonomous operation possible. Three of the CAMS camera stations captured the very early stage of the impact. 42 (2013). Meteor was first seen Oct 22 at 02:53:59.5 UT (19:53:59 local time) Update (Oct 23 1:30 am local time): The Sunnyvale station operated by Jim Albers caught the fireball on cameras 53, 11, 12, 152, 171 and 173! Camera 53 shows the beginning part of the trajectory (see picture above).

Fireball from Fremont Peak Observatory Meteoroid pre-atmospheric orbit had the following properties:

[Video by James S.] 2013, December 11 - Carl Johannink of the CAMS@BeNeLux network reports 172 multi-station trajectories for the night of December 10/11 alone. We are checking our records to see if this one was captured in the CAMS network. The picture above shows the setup still at the SETI Institute. Right: The same fireball in a video by Dave Samuels in Brentwood.

How high is 146 km? The short thick line shows the calculated trajectory, the thin line is extrapolated to the ground, ending close to Lake Tahoe. Goals is to map the southern hemisphere meteor showers. It appeared at the very edge of the CAMS camera field of view and was captured by the CAMS Sunnyvale station at 03:42 UT. It appeared just outside of the CAMS Lick Observatory and Fremont Peak Observatory station camera fields and, so far, no orbit could be derived. Low perihelion distance = 0.653 AU

Entered Earth atmosphere with speed 17.3 km/s The meteoroid penetrated well below that. First seen at 87.8 km altitude, at Lat = +37.636N, Long = 121.8092W.

CAMS setup ready for deployment in New Zealand. CAMS Spectrograph [News archive] Map with search area. to r.: Peter, Nancy, Herb, Kevin, Steve, Wendy, Michelle, and Jason. Leads are Olga Popova (Institute of Geosphere Dynamics of the RAS) and Slava Emel'yanenko (Astronomical Institute of the RAS), both of Moscow. 2014, January 12 - A dashcam video of this fireball was posted here. Jack Baggaley reports that the new CAMS camera boxes arrived at the University of Canterbury in Christchurch in good shape. The first box was run in a darkened room: "We see OK the 16 square images for each camera (with one black due to broken connection inside the camera box by the socket - we need to repair it)." . Thrity people met in the town of Hoenderloo today, to search for possible fallen meteorites. Sadly, any surviving meteorites would have landed in the Pacific Ocean. 2013, Aug 26 - Meteoroids 2013 Conference in Poznan, Poland. Olga Popova of the Institute for Dynamics of Geospheres of the RAS and Vacheslav Emel'yanenko of the Institute of Astronomy of the RAS in Moscow. This week, software and hardware were integrated and tested in actual observing conditions at the CAMS station in Sunnyvale. Fireball moved from right to left. Various routines for data analysis have been developed by Anthony Berdue and Peter Jenniskens, but the integration into an end-to-end software package is pending. 2014, January 26 - Jack Baggaley is reporting that the CAMS New Zealand setup is being assembled and tested at the University of Canterbury in Christchurch. Pavel Spurny of Ondrejov Observatory has calculated that about 2 kg of meteorites may have fallen. [Reports]

2014, January 1 - A HAPPY NEW YEAR to all members of the growing CAMS family! Thank you for making 2013 a most fruitfull and unforgettable year. 2013, November 10 - Meteorite fall! CAMS participants in the BeNeLux network report that may have captured the fall of a meteorite over the Netherlands on October 30th. It approached from the direction of the constellation Virgo, and collided head-on with the Earth at a location just north of Yosemite National Park, entering Earth's atmosphere at the fastest possible entry speed of 72 +/- 6 km/s (= 45 miles/s, or 160 thousand miles per hour). Gray area shows predictions of overpressure from asteroid impact models. The meteor fragmented towards the end, but so far no sounds were reported. It basically is the same threading structure as the two channel version of the code. Pete Gural developed the algorithms to monitor all 16 cameras for meteor spectra at the same time. Asteroid 2014 AA appears to have impacted Earth about 21 hours after it was discovered by the Catalina Sky Survey (Richard Kowalsky). Photo: Evgueny Tvorogov.

2013, September 28 - The Dutch and Belgium observers in the CAMS@BeneLux network meet to coordinate the pointing of cameras in this rapidly expanding network. The meteor was first spotted by the station at Lick Observatory at an altitude of 146.1 +/- 1.0 km (90.8 miles) and was tracked at the stations in Sunnyvale and Fremont Peak Observatory down to 133.8 +/- 0.2 km (83.1 miles), after which the fireball moved outside the field of view. Reports are collected at the American Meteor Society website. Extraction of the short fast tracks proved difficult, but CAMS software architect Pete Gural succeeded in extracting each track. In the global media, information about the magnitude of this event came initially from the University of Western Ontario team, who analysed infrasound data. Local residents were engaged and we hope that someone will find one. The video provides a lightcurve of the fireball.

2014, January 2 - Today, the next 2008 TC3 event has finally occurred. Again, smack through the middle of the camera field... Image courtesy of Jim Albers. 2013, June 17 - Carl Johannink reports that the CAMS@BeNeLux network is rapidly expanding, now with 18 cameras operational. The orbit tally so far is 101,240 orbits. Search team, from l. [media report (in Dutch)]

The meteoroid originated from the Oort cloud and approached Earth on a shallow 19 +/- 7 degrees inclined orbit, moving in opposite direction around the Sun. NASA Ames and SETI Institute meteor astronomer Dr. Train left is from aircraft. 2012, November 05 - First Light for CAMS @ North Atlantic network! Pete Gural ran last night for the first time with all four cameras mounted on his roof in Sterling, Maryland, and the Sensoray 2255 grabbing 4 channels without problems. Peter Jenniskens participated in this effort as outside expert and coordinated the study of the recovered meteorites.[More here]

According to Jenniskens, based on these preliminary results this was not a member of the Taurid shower, but likely a rock of asteroidal origin. From mere four cameras a year ago and 18 in June, the network is now approaching 30 operational cameras. The CAMS station at Fremont Peak should have captured this fireball. Two computers run single-CAMS detection software developed by Pete Gural that produce the astrometric data for each meteor. On Thursday morning, while approaching it's nearest point to the Sun at 0.98 +/- 0.03 Astronomical Units, it found Earth in its way. From: Popova et al., Science Vol. From triangulations of these video records, the object's trajectory in the atmosphere and orbit in space were calculated.

2014, January 20 - A team of nine (Peter Jenniskens, Jason Utas, Michelle Myers, Wendy Guglieri, Herb Tanimoto, Nancy Hood, Barbara Broide, Steve Herrin and Kevin Heider) searched this area near Tranquillity on January 17-19, but no obvious meteorites with black fusion crust were found. The monthly yield of orbits is shown in the plot below. Combining the Sunnyvale camera 53 astrometry with results from the 213 camera in Brentwood provides the following **preliminary** solution from triangulation (calculations by Peter Jenniskens, SETI Institute and NASA Ames Research Center, based on observations by CAMS project participants Dave Samuels and Jim Albers):

2013, February 22- This fireball was widely reported in the evening of February 15, the day of the Chelyabinsk fireball. Mulder 2013, March 12- First light with the new CAMS Spectrograph, currently set up next to the Sunnyvale CAMS station (Jim Albers). The overpressure caused many windows to break in and around Chelyabinsk (pronounce: "Chel-yeah-binsk") and numerous injuries occurred due to falling glass. The most likely impact area is in the Atlantic Ocean north of Brazil, based on weak infrasound detections by CNBTO stations in Brazil and Bolivia. To see location of 2013 stations, click on map. 2014, January 1 - While re-examining today an animated GIF image created by Marco Langbroek (CAMS@BeNeLux network) to present his discovery of asteroid 2013 GM21 last year April, Peter Jenniskens detected another moving object in the image on a similar main-belt asteroid orbit. PST on Thursday morning, creating hopes of another extraterrestrial surprise delivery of meteorites, but

this bright fireball did not drop meteorites on the ground. Next to the fireball track is a window reflection. The comet matter was almost instantly turned into dust and gas.

2014, January 11 - Data from the CAMS station at Lick Observatory were retreived today and the data shows the beginning part of a slow moving meteor at the reported time. It was taken near 3441 Alma Street in Palo Alto, CA. The first find of meteorites was reported two days later by Prof. The search area is relatively large, 6 by 6 by 6 km, and no meteorites were found during this initial search. Grotkovsky of South Ural University, and determined to be of type LL5, with shockstage S4 and weathering grade W0.

2014, January 10 - Around 17:49 PST today (Jan 11 01:49 UT), at least 30 people observed a bright fireball from the California San Francisco Bay area and the wider Los Angeles area. Peter gives the keynote lecture "Rocks Falling from the Sky, an update on the CAMS Project". It was captured on the allsky camera of Jim Collins in Chico, CA (photo above). It was captured in a dash-cam video from a car driving southbound on highway 280. Keep tuned for a trajectory solution and updates. Point of main disruption of the Chelyabinks fireball at 27 km altitude. Nevertheless, the CAMS records are being collected. [Map]

2013, May 15- Data reduction for 2012 complete. It did not pass the field of view of the Sunnyvale station. Celebration of CAMS operations. At the College of San Mateo, Daryl Stanford said: "It started out bluish white, then turned green; and it finally seemed to spiral and fragment at the end." Indications are that this meteor ended over the ocean