TORONTO - Small meteorites may have been dropped on southern Ontario by a fireball that streaked through the sky north of Toronto.
Researchers are anxious to retrieve any possible fragments of what's believed to have been a meteorite that appeared over Newmarket, Ont., just after 8:30 p.m. ET on March 15. The Royal Ontario Museum and The University of Western Ontario are now asking residents in the area for their help in finding the space debris.
Five cameras recorded a slow fireball which may have dropped small meteorites in a region between Newmarket and Lake Simcoe.
The fragments may total as much as a few hundred grams.
The fireball was captured by a network of cameras set up in southern Ontario by the physics and astronomy department at Western.
Dr. Kim Tait, who is in charge of meteorite collection at the museum, says the fireball fragments will give clues to the material in our solar system.
"We're very excited about this fireball occurrence in Ontario," Tait said in a release Wednesday.
"Although this is not the first time a meteorite has fallen in Ontario, we are very interested in recovering fragments."
Residents who discover fragments on their property are asked to contact the museum's mineralogy department.
The fragments are not dangerous to handle and often are black due to a fusion crust, a thin black rind, which is sometimes shiny or dull black due to the outer surface being burned during entry into the atmosphere.
They are almost always magnetic, so people who find a suspected fragment should test for this as well.
