Mike's Astro Photos

Lots of finds are being made out in Wisconsin. At least ten have been reported so far and I’m sure there are more that haven’t been announced yet. This fireball event is a meteorite hunters dream come true. Everything worked out as perfectly as one could want: multiple cameras from different sides of the track captured direct sightings of the fireball, 1000s of witnesses saw it, three radar returns spanning more than 25 miles were captured. The radar returns alone told hunters exactly where to go and that is the main reason why meteorites were recovered 22 hours after the fall. For fun I plotted the track based on the radar data and two videos. For the videos I used the US Bank video from Milwaukee and the police dash cam video from the Howard County Sheriff.

Here are two pictures of the doppler radar data:

Wisconsin Meteor Doppler Radar Data - April 14, 2010

And here’s a close up:

Wisconsin Meteor Doppler Radar - April 14th, 2010

For the videos, the first thing you have to do is figure out where they were taken from. I knew one video had the Milwaukee US Bank building in it. Using 3d buildings in google earth I was able to determine with a pretty good approximation where the first camera was. I then used the 3d buildings to line up the shot to determine the azimuth readings. Here’s a view of downtown Milwaukee where I think the camera was located.

US Bank Milwaukee Fireball - April 14, 2010

For the second camera I don’t know the exact location so I just picked a random place. Using these three data sets and my interpretation of the witness reports I have plotted the ground track for the Wisconsin Meteor. This is certainly not exact, but I think it might be pretty close.

Wisconsin Fireball Ground Track - April 14, 2010

There are meteorites in and around the town of Milfin Wisconsin. Mike Farmer thinks there are thousands of them.