Searching for meteors by amateur scientists and astronomers in the Tuscan countryside – Corriere.it

The search for the missing meteor began early in the morning right after a short lesson from astronomers on how to find an alien and never touch it. Then, about fifty people, divided into five groups, began to patrol inch by inch and to form a “comb” of the area where the splinter fell, A rural area about ten kilometers long and a few kilometers wide between Usti and LucianoPrato and Pistoia counties. Nothing was found but a few black stones, a piece of rusty iron, and a pair of horns from an unknown animal. “but The search will also continue on Sunday and the following days. “It’s been identified by video cameras, and it’s the meteorite, and we hope it won’t escape us,” said Alex Mazanti, advertising graphic designer and president of the Montelupo Astrovilli Group.

Research brings together scholars and researchers (Among them are director of the Museum of Planetary Sciences in Prato Marco Morelli, researcher at the University of Florence Tiberio Copponi and Fabrizio Bernardi, astronomer Space Dys, a former branch of the University of Pisa collaborating with the European Space Agency), with hobbyists and volunteers of all kinds, enchanted by this “star”. The cold” that rained at 3 am on October 1 with a luminous track in the sky of Tuscany and its aunt Prisma Cameras, the Italian surveillance network coordinated by INAF in Turin, with more than 60 cameras aimed at the universe.

It rained a little asteroid in our atmosphere, From the same material as the stars of San LorenzoIt should weigh about fifty grams and be a few centimeters in diameter. So why all the attention to a charred pebble? “Because it can tell us a page from the history of our universe,” explains Maura Tomelli, a now retired former banker, Italian astronomer to discover more asteroids and founder of an astronomical observatory with the municipality in Montelupo opened by Piero Angela. Mora will also be participating in the research in the coming days. “This pebble, which may have arrived from the asteroid belt between Jupiter and Mars – explains the amateur astronomer – will tell many stories. Perhaps it will be made up of iridium like the great asteroid that fell in the Gulf of Mexico and caused the extinction of the dinosaurs. Or it will hide secrets we don’t know”

The important thing is that it is not contaminated with human skin. That is why the researchers and scientists provided the teams with bowls and gloves, otherwise the analyzes would be distorted. I asked the locals to inspect their vegetable gardens and nurseries and, if possible, look at the large rooftops of the farms. Very carefully, without touching anything”, says Marco Morelli, director of the Museum of Planetary Science in Prato. Just like yesterday Marco Iosi, 56, a computer scientist with an intense passion for stars, just finished his first day of research. “It was a wonderful experience, he says, that combined passion, science and technology. An app connected to a GPS (satellite system) tracked our route and mapped the area we discovered, so we’ll know where to continue in the next few days.” “It was exciting, as if you were entering a museum hoping to find in front of you a treasure raining from the sky,” says Paolo Vini, 54, a metalworking engineer. We haven’t found it today, but there will be time to learn about it. And then we make him talk.”