Western’s Meteor Group tracks fireball in the evening sky east of Toronto

London - The Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) and The University of Western Ontario are looking for help from local residents in recovering a meteorite that fell to earth in the Newmarket, Ont. area.

At 8:37 p.m. on Sunday, March 15 (01:37 UT March 16), five cameras of Western's Southern Ontario Meteor Network recorded a fireball in the evening sky. The slow fireball may have dropped small meteorites in a region between Newmarket and Lake Simcoe, providing masses that may total as much as a few hundred grams.

Captured by the network of all-sky cameras set up in Southern Ontario by the Physics and Astronomy Department at Western, the footage reveals a fireball dropping meteorites in Newmarket.

“We’re very excited about this fireball occurrence in Ontario. Although this is not the first time a meteorite has fallen in Ontario, we are very interested in recovering fragments from this fireball, which gives us small clues to the material in our solar system,” says Kim Tait, Associate Curator of Mineralogy at the ROM, who is in charge of the meteorite collection. Last fall, a bright fireball was witnessed by hundreds of people in Alberta and Saskatchewan. Meteorites are being recovered southeast of Lloydminster, Saskatchewan, which is looking to be the largest meteorite fall in Canadian history.

Phil McCausland, Post Doctoral Fellow, Centre for Planetary Science & Exploration at Western says, “Based on analysis of the network video records of the event, the fireball's moderate brightness and how it slowed down towards the end of its entry indicate that it is likely to have produced some meteorites on the ground.

“The total delivered mass is probably no more than a few hundred grams and could be in one piece or many smaller fragments. Recovering a meteorite from this event would be very helpful because we can put it in a solar system context.”

Local residents are encouraged to contact The ROM’s Mineralogy Department should they discover parts of the meteorite on their property. A meteorite is essentially a meteor that has completed its journey to the surface of the Earth. The journey is commonly referred to as a ‘shooting star’, essentially a fireball travelling into the Earth’s atmosphere.

Most meteors burn as they enter the Earth’s atmosphere. The likelihood of meteorite fragments hitting humans is extremely rare. They are not dangerous to handle, and often are black due to the ‘fusion crust’ or a thin black rind, sometimes shiny, sometimes matte black due to the outer surface being burned during entry into our atmosphere. They are almost always magnetic, so people who find a suspected fragment should test for this as well.

Tait and her team from the ROM will be conducting a public workshop in Newmarket on how to identify meteorites. For more information on this or for assistance in identifying possible meteorites, please contact Tait at 416-586-5820 or ktait@rom.on.ca