From: spike66 (spike66@attbi.com)
Date: Tue Sep 10 2002 - 21:30:33 MDT
Amara Graps wrote:
> OK, but there was already a major fireball in the middle of Europe
> (Bavaria) this year (April 6), that was, an 'extremely rare event',
> and it _will_ go down in history...
There was another fireball in Europe Sunday according to yesterday's
paper. The universal surveillance discussion got me to thinking: we
could use cheapy stationary cameras to figure out about where the meteor
hit the ground. Visualize a vertical camera with a common thousand by
thousand pixel focal plane array with a fisheye lens that lets the camera
see from horizon to horizon. This 1 megapixel array will allow resolution
of position to about 20 arc minutes.
If we set these cameras to record unusual transients and time stamp
them, we could use any two of them to triangulate the instantaneous
position of the fireball. As the meteor got close to the ground, the
20 arcminutes should be ample resolution to fix the position. Given
a few thousand such cameras on a continent the size of Europe, we
should be able to estimate the landing place of a meteorite close
enough to get a bunch of yahoos together to go out and find it.
I suspect we could get a few thousand volunteers to buy such an
outfit if a web-based tracking system could be devised. I would
buy one and set it on my house, if we could get the cost down to
a few hundred US clams.
spike
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