Why surveying? – Fireballs in the Sky
To accurately track down the trajectory of the meteor, we need to know the exact angle vertically and horizontally as well as velocity of entry. To do this we are extracting information from each of the different videos.
The team have already been out to the Scarborough Beach Rd/Charles St intersection with help from the Department of Spatial Sciences team at Curtin Uni. Rather than just measure a few altitudes and azimuths from the lightposts, these surveying machines take a full scan of all objects in view, and measure their angles super-accurately using lasers and GPS location.
The better the measurements, the narrower the predicted fall site = the easier to find meteorites!
More teams have headed out today to measure the angles at the Great Northern Highway in the Swan Valley and on the Narrows Bridge in Perth to help us find meteorites using spatial science.