BOCOSUR: An all sky network for fireball detection in Uruguay

Original Abstract

Over the past couple of decades, several networks for the automatic detection of fireballs have been deployed. Their primary scientific goal is to facilitate the rapid recovery of meteorites, determine their pre-atmospheric orbits, and look for possible dynamic links with parent bodies. The Bocosur network is a contribution to the global deployment of automated fireball networks and to the increase of the number of recoverable meteorite falls. It is located in Uruguay, South America (Lat: -30$^{\circ}$ to -35$^{\circ}$). Its main scientific goal is the detection of fireballs of asteroidal origin, massive enough to produce meteorites, and also to inspire secondary-level students and teachers through their involvement in this citizen-science oriented project. The deployment of this network started in 2019, and was completed in March, 2023, when we installed 20 stations separated $\sim 120$ km, covering an area of $\sim 180,000$ km$^2$. During this period of time, one major technological upgrade was made when we migrated from a well-known camera to a higher-resolution, more sensitive system. We were able to build a completely autonomous system at an affordable cost that can be replicated in all the stations. A comparison between the astrometric and photometric performance of these two detection systems is reported. Also, a photometric methodology for estimating the brightness of very bright fireballs is presented and validated against the known magnitudes of Jupiter and the full Moon. We obtain mean residuals of the astrometric reduction of $\sim$5', and the discrepancy between the obtained brightness of Jupiter and the Moon average to 0.18 and 1.2 magnitudes, respectively. Results on the processing of a very bright (M$_{peak}\sim$-9.0 mag) fireball detected in four stations are also presented.