Shire of Upper Gascoyne part of the Global Meteor Network
In November 2023, the Shire of Upper Gascoyne was successful in an application to host a Night Sky Camera through the Perth Observatory as part of the Global Meteor Project. The project was made possible thanks to the 2023 Inspiring WA STEM Grant, supported by the Department of Jobs, Tourism, Science and Industry, and Scitech.
From July 6, 2024 the skies above the Gascoyne Junction Community Resource & Visitor Information Centre will capture data throughout the night utilising time lapse to contribute to this global research project. A timelapse of each day can be seen here.
Timelapse: Monday 08 July 2024
For more details on data collected from Gascoyne Junction visit www.globalmetornetwork.org/weblog Gascoyne Junction is site AU0032
How to find out more about the Global Meteor Network?
The main operational goal of the project is to establish a decentralized science-grade instrument which observes the night sky every night of the year from as many locations around the world as possible.
The science goals of the project are the following:
- Providing the meteor community with real-time awareness of the near-Earth meteoroid environment by publishing orbits of all observed meteors from all around the globe every morning.
- Observing meteor showers, computing their flux, mass indices and orbits to constrain meteor shower prediction models.
- Observing meteorite-producing fireballs to increase the number of meteorites with known orbits (only ~50 circa 2021, more info: http://www.meteoriteorbits.info/) and help constrain meteorite source regions.
To find out more visit www.globalmetornetwork.org