AN ANGLESEY museum which is used to dealing with ancient history is now turning its attention to objects billions of years old blazing their way across the Welsh sky.
Special high tech camera equipment has been placed on the island’s council-run Oriel Môn museum and arts centre in Llangefni which is helping to gather research about meteorites.
It is one of three in Wales, including one in Aberystwyth and another in Cardiff.
A meteorite is a piece of rock or metal fragment that falls to earth from space.
Meteoroids are rocks that still are in space, and range in size from dust grains to small asteroids, but when meteoroids enter Earth’s atmosphere at high speed and burn up, the fireballs or “shooting stars” are called meteors.
When a meteoroid survives a trip through the atmosphere and hits the ground, it’s then called a meteorite.
Within days of the new technology being put into place on the popular museum, art gallery and cafe roof – organisers were delighted that it soon recorded an event.
The camera is helping to provide information for research as part of SCAMP – the System for Capture of Asteroid and Meteorite Paths, the UK component of an international network known as FRIPON – the Fireball Recovery and Inter-Planetary Observation Network.
SCAMP cameras had been originally installed at sites in Honiton and London, but now the network consists of a number across the UK, hosted by research institutions, local astronomy societies and citizen-scientists.
SCAMP is also part of the UK Fireball Alliance (UKFAll), a collaboration between the UK’s meteor camera networks that aims to recover freshly fallen meteorites.
According to its website, in February 2021, data from SCAMP cameras in Cardiff, Honiton, and Manchester played “an important role” in the recovery of the Winchcombe meteorite described as “a rare carbonaceous chondrite fall”.
The Royal Society Winchcombe Meteorite website said: “Just before 10 pm on February 28, 2021, a spectacular fireball was seen blazing through the skies over the UK.
The next morning, a family in the town of Winchcombe, Gloucestershire woke to discover a pile of dark rocks had crash-landed on their driveway!
“These rocks, the first meteorites recovered in the UK for 30 years, hold vital clues about the origin of the solar system and formation of planets.”
Kelly Parry, the senior manager of the archives, museum and gallery at Oriel Môn said: “The Llangefni camera had only been installed on November 21, 2024.
“So, we were very pleased to hear that our camera had captured its first meteorite image just a few days later, on November 26.
“There was also a nice capture of a single image view on December 8.
“We are also very pleased that the camera in Llangefni is now helping to fill a gap in the current network of cameras.
“And we are also excited about getting examples of meteorites for our handling boxes for us with visiting school pupils, and which are coming from the National Museum of Wales, Down2 Earth Project.”
She added that the Science & Technology Facilities Council (STFC) are also helping to fund the SCAMP network of cameras.
UKFAll has recently received funding from STFC – part of which will be used to install an additional 13 SCAMP cameras, providing nearly full coverage of the UK by the end of 2025.
