18 EMAILS,. 5 CAR DASH CAMERA VIDEO CLIPS. This resulted in a triangulation of the fireball's path to around Moora, 200km north of Perth and sustained.
2015 FINALIST PREMIER’S SCIENCE AWARDS NATIONAL iAWARDS
Maximising citizen engagement: the Perth Daytime Fireball MONDAY 9 MARCH, 2015, 9:30 am
See a shooting star, make a wish, then tell us about it!
PERTH: Through a clear blue sky, a fireball streaked and fragmented, witnessed by hundreds, maybe thousands.
We are engaging people of all ages and backgrounds in science through the excitement of real time meteor research. Our smartphone app enables anyone to accurately[1] report fireball sightings, but we also get a kick out of our Immediately, the Fireballs team was talking to media, sharing further information on meteors - gaining coverage in[2]:
• Social media and website • School and public events • Free downloadable activities and experiments
The Desert Fireball Network (DFN) tracks fireballs in order to study the meteorites that might eventuate from them in order to better understand our Solar System and how the Earth was formed. The DFN is 32 autonomous cameras and continues to grow across the Nullabor - check out the online interactive map at http://fireballsinthesky.com.au/maps/ dfn-cameras-map/
20 NEWS ARTICLES, 170 TWEETS, 101 LIKES, 20 RADIO BROADCASTS and
10 TELEVSION NEWS REPORTS IN ONE WEEK.
We asked for more sightings and useful data and got it - in the form of
6 CONFIRMED APP REPORTS, 18 EMAILS,
GIVE IT A TRY! SUBMIT YOUR EMAIL ADDRESS WITH A REPORT OF A FAUX FIREBALL FROM MOUNT AINSLIE TO THE SHINE DOME TO GO IN THE DRAW TO
5 CAR DASH CAMERA VIDEO CLIPS.
WIN A T-SHIRT
This resulted in a triangulation of the fireball’s path to around Moora, 200km north of Perth and sustained news coverage of the event for over two months. Because the camera footage and app reports all orginated from similar locations (in the Perth metro area), the potential fall area could not be pinponted with great precision. The calcuated fall area of more than 50km2 was too large for a concerted search effort.
But what if we had an app report from a location to the east or west? Would that provide rigorous scientific data? Ridgewell, J., Rennie, L., Bland, P. A., & Paxman,
We’re working on answering the following questions. Can you help us? • How reliable is our app? • How reliable are our reporters and their devices? • How many reports do we need to receive in order to start a meteorite search based solely on citizen contributions? • How do we ensure enough app sighting reports? • What can we learn from other citizen science apps?
www.fireballsinthesky.com.au 13,066
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[1] Paxman, J. & Bland, P. A. 2014. 45th Lunar and Planetary Science Conference, 1731. [2] iSentia, 2015. Fireballs in the Sky and Perth Daytime Fireball coverage. Icons made by Freepik, Daniel Bruce, Designmodo, Elegant Themes, Icomoon, OCHA, SimpleIcon, Anton Saputro. Flaticon is licensed by Creative Commons BY 3.0
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