Mike's Astro Photos

Its out there.

Here is a quick update on a few different meteor related things:

– Star witness turned fireball chaser, M Gaines has been working the field looking for security videos and he has just found one! I talked to M Gaines tonight and he told me about the video. It is not a direct capture, instead a reflection from a large truck’s windshield. The video comes from a secure location and proper sign off is required to release the video. M Gaines watched the video and after analyzing the information he concluded the video supports the current search location. Gaines was focusing on finding videos between the location where he witnessed the fireball and the current estimated drop zone. I will post the video once it becomes available.
– July 5th, 2009 satellite imagery has been ordered.
– Aerial survey date tentatively set for mid next week. Working on flight plan, GPS programming and camera/equipment acquisition. All leading meteorite experts believe this fireball was a ‘standard fall’ and did not leave any significant impact craters that would be visible from 100-200 feet in the air.
– Jeff from Coopersburg, PA wrote me today and tipped me off to the department inside the Air Force that captures, tracks and sometimes shares fireball data. I called them today and talked to someone on the first try. The person I spoke to was very nice, was familiar with what I was talking about and gave me the name and number for the Sergeant in charge of this (I left him a voice mail). I tried to follow up with an email, but I couldn’t get their online form to work, so I wrote him a letter and fedex’d it to him today.
– I’m working on new detailed maps of the search zones. The maps include marked and named roads, identified and numbered properties, land marks and estimated areas for different sized meteorites (based on Marc Fries strewn field map).   I have downloaded all of the land records for this area so I have pretty good data on who and where the land owners are. I’ve also already met and talked to about 15 of them. All of them have been incredibly nice and helpful. I will be posting the maps once they are ready.
– I’ve hired a writer friend of mine to do PR work. She will be putting out some direct mailers to land owners, businesses and churches in the area. She will also be trying to get the Lancaster news paper and other smaller town newspapers to run new stories about the meteorite search.
– I should be in the area talking to land owners and looking around 1-2 times this week/weekend.
– I added an Asteroids video game widget to the right sidebar of the blog. Click yes on the legal terms and conditions to go back to the 80s.
– My back is feeling much better (about 90%), thanks for caring