Question: How do you track the meteorites before examining them?

Roy Adkin answered on 10 Mar 2014:

Hi Callum…great username by the way…very clever!
Good question. Nowadays if they are seen their trajectory can be tracked…take the Chelyabinsk meteorite last year in Russia. So much data was available…especially video. You can check the velocity, angle of entry etc. to locate the position of impact (it was also pretty big!). If a meteorite is seen to impact and can be found by this process it is called a ‘fall’. Other than these rare occurrences meteorites can be located just by looking for them. The best places are the desert and the polar caps. The stones are black and burned so they stand out against the snow or the colour of the desert which tends to be uniform. In this case the meteorite is called a ‘find’.
I hope this answers you question 🙂