U of C researchers find meteorite remnants

It was a giant fireball that lit up the sky above Calgary, western Canada and northwest U.S. and now, pieces of a meteorite have been found by University of Calgary researchers.

After the meteorite was captured by many cameras across the sky on the evening of September 4th, associate professor in the Dept. of Geoscience Dr. Alan Hildebrand and his team got to work.

They interviewed dozens of eyewitnesses and studied home, business and research videos and in late October, located remnants from the meteorite on private land in Crawford Bay, B.C.

“Getting the information from the people who just happened to have systems is irreplaceable we couldn’t do without out,” Hildebrand said. “you have all the videos of the fireball, you now, with all the trajectory, you can figure out what orbit it fell from.”

A master’s student from Italy, Fabio Ciceri, was the first to find pieces of the meteorites.

“For me, it was a like a dream to find a meteorite, because since I was (a) child, I looked at the sky every night,” he said.

Hildebrand said a rock of this size comes through Canada about once every five years and they’ll continue to searching to hopefully find more pieces and figure out more regarding the size of the parent meteorite, as well as how long it was exposed for and its trajectory.

But he adds there’s also larger discoveries to be made.

“This helps you understand the structure of our solar system a little better, the structure of the asteroid belt,” he said.