Skyandtelescope.com wrote an article about the Mason Dixon meteor and my picture.

I’m working them to publish the picture and write up a story about the meteorite hunt. We’ll see. If I find some of these meteorite rocks I’d say its a no-brainer for them to publish a story. Even if we don’t find the rocks, this is still a great story S&T… Has any astro-photographer every captured an image of a fireball meteor thru a telscope? I’ve searched google images for hours and haven’t been able to find one yet.

Thanks Kelly! Great article.

Forwarded conversation
Subject: “Fireball” Image
————————

From: Richard Kowalski
Date: Sun, Jul 12, 2009 at 12:00 AM
To: Mike Hankey
Cc: Kelly Beatty

Hello,

Kelly Beatty gave me your address.

I would like to inspect your image of the recent fireball a little more closely. I’m not entirely convinced that the object you captured is the fireball, but I believe that a closer examination of the original frame will be informative. Would it be possible for you to send me the original, unprocessed frame?

I will not redistribute or use the image in any way other than a close inspection on my computer and I will delete the image once I have finished my examination.

Thanks for considering my request.

—
Richard Kowalski
Catalina Sky Survey
Lunar and Planetary Laboratory
University of Arizona
Tucson, AZ 85721

———-
From: Mike Hankey
Date: Sun, Jul 12, 2009 at 12:15 AM
To: Richard Kowalski

yes i can send it to you. the main image is over 7 megs… so might be a bit big for email.

what makes you think it might not be the fireball. what would you suggest that it is?

numerous meteor experts have pointed out all sorts of things about the picture that indicate it is a meteor. Including fragments of meteorites that are breaking away from the main body.

I don’t have any problems having you confirm, i’m just interested to know what else you think it could be?

Personally i know it is because I heard the boom and the timing was exact. I also know its not a hoax / fake, but I would be happy to have that proved, cause i don’t expect the scientific community to ‘just trust me’.

Let me figure out how i’m gonna get you the file cause its pretty big.

Are you a professor, phd, astronomer? Can you tell me a little more about yourself?

I’m actively trying to locate the fragments, if you have any info / data on the trajectory that you could give me that would be much appreciated.

Thanks.

———-
From: Mike Hankey
Date: Sun, Jul 12, 2009 at 12:31 AM
To: Richard Kowalski

here’s an article from a meteorite expert that describes a lot of things about the picture. i’m uploading the pic now to my site. i’ll send you the url once its up there.

http://meteoriteblog.com/

———-
From: Mike Hankey
Date: Sun, Jul 12, 2009 at 12:42 AM
To: Richard Kowalski

Here is the link to the raw image file:

[link removed / leave a comment if you would like to review the RAW file]

I’m very interested to know why you have some doubt about the current picture. I’m also interested to hear your analysis after you’ve looked at the picture.

The picture is 100% real. If its not the fireball what else could it be? Its certainly not a firefly, or a plane. And the timing is exact. I heard and felt the sonic boom and this happened at the same exact time the picture was taken.

Thanks looking forward to your reply.

——————-

From: Richard Kowalski
Date: Sun, Jul 12, 2009 at 12:48 AM
To: Mike Hankey

Hi Mike,

I am an astronomer with the Catalina Sky Survey. We search for Near Earth Asteroids and are the most productive survey in that field. I am also the discoverer of 2008 TC3, the first object to be discovered in space and then impacting on earth. That happened last October.

Here is our website:

http://www.lpl.arizona.edu/css/

I certainly do not think that the image is “fake” or hoaxed, but my original suspicion was that the object you imaged was an aircraft. We often see aircraft, satellites and meteors in our images. On an average night we examining literally a thousand images or more, so I am probably more experienced looking at these types of images than any other person who has contacted you about your image.

I have often seen images that have a combination of the effects that is visible in your image, and they usually turn out to be aircraft. However, on examining the versions of your image much more closely, I am starting to think I may be mistaken and you actually did catch this object soon after it broke up, but was rapidly fading.

I see you have sent me the url. I will download the image shortly and let you know what I think as soon as I have finished a closer examination.

I really do appreciate you providing this image file for me and am very glad to see you use RAW. I have a 20D and love it. I’m in the process of replacing the shutter, which gave out after 90,000 exposures.

Talk to you soon.

Thanks! Mike Hankey wrote:

———-
From: Richard Kowalski
Date: Sun, Jul 12, 2009 at 1:00 AM
To: Mike Hankey

Hey Mike,

I’m convinced. You have an image of the fireball! Congrats. Great catch!

What I wanted to see was the variation in the brightness of the trails at full resolution, both in pixels and bit depth. I’m curious though if the camera is set to the correct time?

The file has the time 12:03:51am embedded in it and I’d just like to confirm if that is correct of if it is off by any amount and if so by how much.

Thanks again for allowing me to examine your original data. I very much appreciate that!

Cheers and keep up the good work! Mike Hankey wrote:

———-
From: Mike Hankey
Date: Sun, Jul 12, 2009 at 1:12 AM
To: Richard Kowalski

Thanks Richard,

Congratulations on TC3 that sounds fascinating. I will read up about that and your work. Please work very hard at your job, I don’t want earth to get hit by a giant asteroid!

My first thought was it was a plane too, when I initially looked at the picture on the camera view finder. That screen is really small and hard to tell and I remember thinking, that’s way to big for a plane, but I chalked it up as some type of problem in the shot. I’ve shot lots of plane trails and they are usually about 1 pixel wide.

I just got your response! Thanks that is great.

I noticed the time thing too, but the file system is 12:06. So that means the elapsed time should have be 12:03:51-12:06:51 (+1 for DLS). I think the camera is not adjusted for daylight savings time. Its off by 1 hour. I’m not sure if the time stamp is at the beginning of the photo or the end. I’m also not sure how off the time is on the camera but I will check.

Would you mind if I posted our email thread on my site? This is a great thrill to hear from someone as important as you and I’d love to post your validation of the picture.

Thanks,

Mike

——-

From: Richard Kowalski
Date: Sun, Jul 12, 2009 at 1:00 AM
To: Mike Hankey

Cheers and keep up the good work!

———-
From: Richard Kowalski
Date: Sun, Jul 12, 2009 at 2:50 AM
To: Mike Hankey

Mike,
Please feel free to post my comments on your blog.

I was very adamant that your image was an aircraft passing through the field on the Meteorite List. Meteorites are a hobby for me, so there are plenty of other more knowledgeable people there. However, I found that I had questions about my own ID and wanted to make sure I did not disseminate incorrect information there. There are a large number of meteorite hunters who are trying to determine where the strewn field for this fall should be and I did not want to provide incorrect information or assessment either way. The more high quality information available, the more likely fragments will be recovered.

Again, thank you for letting me examine your data and congrats.

Richard

Yesterday was a great day! In addition to being my first day as a meteorite hunter I also had my pictured published on the first page of the Baltimore Sun and the York Daily Record. I also recorded an interview with the local Baltimore ABC news that aired at 5:30 and again at 11.

Here is a link to the story and video on the ABC2 news website:

ABC2 News story about Mason Dixon Meteor

Special thanks to Joce Sterman of ABC news. She made me feel very comfortable, asked great questions and was very knowledgeable about meteorites and this story.

Also special thanks to Frank Roylance of the Baltimore Sun. Frank your story sent chills up my spine. I bought about 50 copies of the sun yesterday. Can I order more. I’d like to put in an order for 1000 copies please. Who do I contact at the sun about that?

I have a lot of cool things in the pipe line: new scientific data relating to the trajectory, simulated pictures of the night sky as the meteor flew thru it and a simulated video. I’m also filming a documentary about the hunt for the Mason Dixon Meteor. Stay tuned!

With all the excitement over this fireball meteor I’ve decided to start a new profession. Wish me luck!

This past Monday Kai Jackson and a camera man named Darrel from WJZ came out to my house to interview me about my meteor picture. They arrived at my house around 7, recorded for well over an hour. Kai asked me a lot of great questions and really seemed genuinely interested in the story and my experience. I only got about 15 seconds of face time when it aired but he had a lot of footage of me answering questions about the picture and the event. I’m going to try and see if I can get the raw interview tape from him, but I think that might be a long shot.

Here are a few pictures my friend Vincent took during the interview. Take a close look at the last one. There’s something a little strange about it.

Today has been crazy. I’ve got over 2 dozen emails from scientists, meteorite hunters and astronomers.

I’ve asked some of the meteorite experts if they can guess the size and they speculate the meteor was 1-2 meters big which is huge in meteor terms considering most shooting stars are about the size of a grain of rice. Other experts have scoffed at estimating it saying its simply impossible to know. I personally think it is very possible to calculate the size from my picture, but I don’t know how.

There is a lot of confusion about how much meteorites cost or are worth. This article from astronomy.com gives a pretty good explaination of the costs. Like most things the cost is based on supply and demand.

The most common meteorites generally cost between $3-$6 per gram while exotic meteorites  filled filled with space gems or carbon based diamonds that contain life’s building blocks may cost $30,000 per gram (these are super rare.) Meteorites that originated from Mars or the Moon are also very expensive. The most expensive meteor on ebay.com has a buy it now price of $3,500,000. Its over 2000 grams and comes in at $1500 per gram. It is billed as the ‘rarest’ meteor in the world. More than half of the 1900 metorites for sale on ebay right now are selling for less than $20. Most of them are under $5 and the more expensive ones are ones that have been made into jewlrey already. I found this pretty comprehensive chart of prices for meteorites that details prices for the different types of metiors.

If you are a landowner near a meteor crash site don’t think you’ve hit the jackpot. Most of the meteor hunters that will come knocking at your door are scientists doing research for colleges and museums. Chances are your meteorites will catch a few cents a gram at best. The meteorite hunters that I have met and talked to so far seem like fair people and are in it for the thrill more than the money.  Most of them will want to make a deal with you to pay you for your meteors but you shouldn’t expect a lot of money per gram.

People have told me that from my picture this meteor they think is mostly made out of stone. So its meteorites would fall into the ‘common’ category.  Some people did say there is still a 10% chance this could be space junk. An astro buddy of mine told me that it reminded him of what the space shuttles looked like when they crashed. He also mentioned that spy satelites travel on a south to north orbit so they can easily take pictures of the whole world once per day. The evidence currently supports that the meteor was traveling south to north. So if you are looking for this thing watch out for plutonium batteries!

Skyandtelescope magazine also contacted me and they want to do a story and publish my picture on their website. Kelly sent over this great image of my picture plotted correctly on a star chart. Thanks Kelly! I spent about 2 hours last night unsuccessfully trying to do this exact same thing.

Tonight I recreated the scene of the crime, by telling my scope to go back to the exact date of the picture and then having the goto computer target Andromeda. I was able to determine the RA/DEC numbers. I also took pictures of the sky with a laser to pin point where the meteor would have been. I will post these pictures tomorrow. I want to also make a simulated picture/video of how the sky would have looked in a wider field of view.

I’ve been uploading the WJZ interview to you tube for the last 2 hours. The video file was pretty big. I will post this on the blog once it uploads. A friend of mine re-edited it a bit, it should be pretty good.

I’ve also been plotting all of the sitings reported by different people in different areas, to help determine the trajectory. Alot of really smart people are working on determining the trajectory and I’m confident it will be precisely determined. The American Meteor Society has a meteor log book on line that has detailed reports from over 15 reliable meteor watchers. I’m plugging all of these into google earth to try to map out the path this thing took.

Special thanks to Eric from http://meteoriteblog.com/ who sent me these enhanced versions of the meteor pic. The image enhancements bring out detail in the photo. The little blue arrows indicate the streaking paths of smaller pieces of meteoroid debris.

Mike

Last night I was taking long exposure shots of the andromeda galaxy. I set the camera to take 5×3 minute exposures and then went inside while the job was processing. While I was waiting I hear a large boom and my house shook. I dismissed it as possible fireworks or an earthquake but really didn’t know. The booom had woken up my neighbor and he was outside as well asking me if I heard or saw anything. I told him I did hear it but didn’t know what it was.

I quickly looked at my pics on the camera and saw this with very strange light trails but dismissed it as I was tired and didn’t think about it.

Then I hear about a meteor flying over baltimore today and looked at the picture again. This is definately the meteor and its a crazy picture.

If anyone is out there that wants to know more info about this picture or wants to get a hold of the hi-res file let me know. I sent it to some news stations today and it might be featured on the local news tonight.