Roberto Gorelli mentioned an interesting recently published paper about the analyses on a bright fireball that was observed over Arizona on 2 June 2016. This analysis has been published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society by Csaba Palotai, Ramanakumar Sankar, Dwayne L. Free, J. Andreas Howell, Elena Botella and Daniel Batcheldor. The PDF can be downloaded from https://arxiv.org/pdf/1801.05072.pdf and will certainly interest many meteor amateurs.
Every day fireballs are spotted and some are reported by witnesses via different media. In most cases these reports tell us nothing more than that ‘something’ appeared. Attempts to associate such reports from the public with bright meteors recorded by the CAMS BeNeLux network were very disappointing. Most reports from untrained witnesses are too inaccurate and often in contradiction with the registered camera data.
Whenever a bright event drops some meteorites, recovery depends upon precise determination of the strewn field, which requires a very accurate trajectory determination which is only possible with a triangulation based on camera recordings with a precise timing. Reading the above paper may inspire perhaps more amateurs to install some meteor camera(s). Recovery of most meteorites fails due to lack of accurate data. With more cameras, amateurs can make a difference!
