Development and Preliminary Results of a Novel and Fully-Automated Data Analysis Pipeline for the PRISMA Fireball Network

Le résumé fourni par la source

To date, the optical observation of meteors and fireballs remains one of the most fruitful methods for probing the population of cm-sized and smaller meteoroids. Simultaneously, such observations enable the recovery of freshly-fallen meteorites; indeed, the precise reconstruction of their three-dimensional trajectory in the atmosphere allows to pin-point a relatively small area on the ground where meteorites are likely to be recovered.Pursuing these objectives, the PRISMA (Prima Rete Italiana per la Sorveglianza sistematica di Meteore e Atmosfera) fireball network has deployed, since 2016, more than 80 all-sky cameras dedicated to the observation of fireballs and bolides and to the recovery of freshly-fallen meteorites on the Italian territory. PRISMA is a partner of the international collaboration FRIPON and, to date, the project involves more than 70 participating institutions, and it is coordinated by INAF, the Italian National Institute for Astrophysics.Research activity of recent years has been dedicated to the development, deployment and testing of a complete, original, and automated data analysis pipeline, able to perform automatic astrometric and photometric calibration for each camera and to reconstruct the trajectory of each observed fireball. From there, the pipeline estimates the physical parameters of the meteoroid – based on the simultaneous comparison of altitude, speed and magnitude against a dynamic model – and, finally, its pre-atmospheric orbit.After ten years of operations, PRISMA has observed more than 3000 bright meteors with a limiting meteor magnitude of about -1, among which 11 were determined to be meteorite-droppers and two of them led to meteorite recoveries, namely Cavezzo (01/01/2020, L5-an, 55.3 g) and Matera (14/02/2023, H5, 117.5 g). In this contribution, we present an overview of the PRISMA data reduction pipeline, the current challenges and the future perspectives.

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