Luke, Martin and Jarryd head off to Wolfe Creek meteorite crater in remote WA last week. The plan is to make a 3D image of the crater using a drone, map the crater, take some samples (to analyse for shock or melt glass and confirm the date of impact) and combine it all to make a virtual fieldwork laboratory so you can […]

Most of the Fireballs team headed to California last month to attend the annual Meteoritical Society meeting. ‘MetSoc’ as it is affectionately known offers the international visitors more than just talks about meteorite science. Here’s Ellie’s account of a ‘day out’ during MetSoc. The Advanced Light Source was built to create new particles and discovered loads, including uranium! After the ALS, we […]

Gretchen represented some of the Fireballs team at a recent crater conference in Maryland, U.S.A – the Workshop on issues in crater studies and the dating of planetary surfaces What were you sharing at the conference Gretchen? We’ve been looking at ways to date the surface of craters on Mars using the supercomputers at Curtin University. We now have a great deal […]

Lucy and I saw a sample of the world’s oldest rock yesterday –  from Jack Hills, WA, containing zircons over 4.3 billion years old. We also saw Saturn, it’s rings and a bunch of it’s moons through a telescope as well as a gallery packed full of awesome Aboriginal artwork. Where? Mount Magnet. Why? The annual Mount Magnet Astro Rocks Fest. Each year rock […]

Transient Astronomical Events or ‘transients’ are flickers in space – changes in light that last for seconds, days, weeks or years at a time. These could be caused by supernovae, gamma ray bursts, or asteroids and planets passing in front of their sun. Hadrien’s doing a PhD with the Fireballs team and working out how to use our Desert Fireball Network cameras to […]

Oodnadatta Fireball – Fireballs in the Sky Did we mention how much we love fireballs? This image of an Oodnadatta Fireball was taken by Peter Jerie, amateur astrophotographer on 1 April 2015. We came across it on the blog Lunar Meteorite Hunters a few days later, checked our own Desert Fireball Network cameras, and yes! We got some pictures of it too! We’re […]

WA’s south west isn’t the best terrain for finding meteorites, but that’s where you would have found some last week, along with the Fireballs in the Sky team  – at the Albany Science Awareness Festival. Lucy and Jay had a great time with the folks in Albany  for the Scitech Albany Science Awareness Festival and Great Southern Science Council Careers Rock! Forum. We met more […]

I was lucky enough to attend the launch of the Desert Science Network in Alice Springs last week. I met a bunch of interesting people and learnt about loads of exciting projects happening in areas near or similar to where our Desert Fireball Network cameras are stationed. The Desert Science Network exists to connect the science and the people that live and work in desert […]

We had 21 written reports, 6 app reports, 6 dash cam videos and 59 appearances on TV, radio, online and print newspapers, so you probably heard about it – a fireball over Perth in mid-morning last month. The only meteorite-finding content missing was capturing the fireball on our DFN cameras, because they are designed only to operate after dark (read about the fireball day […]

Last month, Mr Gargano and the students at St Joseph’s School, Northam, hosted Professor Phil Bland, Doctor Gretchen Benedix and Jay Ridgewell from the Fireballs team. We were excited to meet one of our participating schools in the program and share with them the science and wonder of meteors and meteorite study. Phil talked to the year 7s, 8s, 9s and 10s […]