To help chart the cosmos, Western space researchers turn to crowd sourcing

Western University researchers have tapped the help of hundreds of amateur and professional astronomers in an effort to make sure no meteor is unable to slip by the Earth undetected.

To do that, they're relying on the observations taken from 450 cameras in 30 different countries manned by "enthusiastic amateur astronomers" made up of professional and citizen scientists.

That data is then sent to Western University as part of what's called the Global Meteor Network (GMN), headed by Denis Vida.

"So we have a lot of enthusiastic amateur astronomers, citizen scientists and also professionals that build, operate and maintain these cameras," Vida told CBC's Chris dela Torre during Afternoon Drive. "And every night they inspect the data set and send their data to a central server here at the University of Western Ontario."

It's not just about observing meteors – it's about tracking what's left of the ones that make it to the earth's surface too.

"So we also observe a meteorite dropping fireballs," said Vida. "They're quite rare over an area of let's say the country the size of France or Spain. Could only expect two to three of those fireballs a year that drop more than, let's say, 300 grams of meteorites on the ground."

"So because these events are very rare, it is important to observe 24/7."

Vida explained that when one of their cameras spot one of them, they collect the data and find its location so they can retrieve what's left for analysis – and analysis needs to happen quickly.

"There are certain things in them, like some radionuclide to decay very quickly, but those can tell us how old the meteorite is, how long it was after it was ejected from the parent asteroid that it fell on the ground," he said.

Vida explained that what ends up on the ground are just "several kilograms of materials" by the time they reach the earth's surface. They aren't hot either. They cool down on their descent.