BLADE: An Automated Framework for Classifying Light Curves from the Center for Near-Earth Object Studies Fireball Database
Fireballs (bolides) are high-energy luminous phenomena produced when meteoroids and small asteroids enter Earth’s atmosphere at hypersonic speeds, often resulting in fragmentation or complete disintegration accompanied by significant energy release. The resulting bolide light curves capture temporal...
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IOP Publishing
2025-01-01
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| Series: | The Astronomical Journal |
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| Online Access: | https://doi.org/10.3847/1538-3881/adeb55 |
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| author | Elizabeth A. Silber Vedant Sawal |
| author_facet | Elizabeth A. Silber Vedant Sawal |
| author_sort | Elizabeth A. Silber |
| collection | DOAJ |
| description | Fireballs (bolides) are high-energy luminous phenomena produced when meteoroids and small asteroids enter Earth’s atmosphere at hypersonic speeds, often resulting in fragmentation or complete disintegration accompanied by significant energy release. The resulting bolide light curves capture temporal brightness variations as these objects traverse increasingly dense atmospheric layers, providing essential information on meteoroid entry dynamics, fragmentation behavior, and atmospheric energy deposition processes. The Center for Near-Earth Object Studies’ (CNEOS) continuously expanding fireball database offers a globally comprehensive archive of bolide events, including light curves and associated metadata. Events associated with infrasound detections allow direct correlations between acoustic signatures and light curve features, therefore enabling detailed analyses of fragmentation dynamics and energy deposition. Here, we introduce Bolide Light-curve Analysis and Discrimination Explorer (BLADE), a robust and high-fidelity framework specifically designed to analyze bolide light curves for objects detected from space. BLADE incorporates a processing pipeline integrating Savitzky–Golay filtering, prominence-based peak detection, and gradient analysis, enabling systematic identification and classification of fragmentation events and their associated energy release characteristics. Preliminary results demonstrate that BLADE reliably distinguishes distinct bolide behaviors, providing an objective, scalable methodology for characterization and analysis of large bolide light curve data sets. This foundational work establishes a novel pathway for advanced bolide research, with promising applications in planetary defense and global atmospheric monitoring. Future research should adopt an integrative approach combining CNEOS optical data with complementary infrasound measurements, further clarifying relationships between bolide energy deposition and acoustic signatures, thus refining our understanding of meteoroid and asteroid atmospheric entry processes. |
| format | Article |
| id | doaj-art-8e63c45b6e3d4c15b71a40d6496bea8f |
| institution | DOAJ |
| issn | 1538-3881 |
| language | English |
| publishDate | 2025-01-01 |
| publisher | IOP Publishing |
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| series | The Astronomical Journal |
| spelling | doaj-art-8e63c45b6e3d4c15b71a40d6496bea8f2025-08-20T03:03:11ZengIOP PublishingThe Astronomical Journal1538-38812025-01-01170315310.3847/1538-3881/adeb55BLADE: An Automated Framework for Classifying Light Curves from the Center for Near-Earth Object Studies Fireball DatabaseElizabeth A. Silber0https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4778-1409Vedant Sawal1https://orcid.org/0009-0009-4327-5438Sandia National Laboratories , Albuquerque, NM 87123, USA ; esilbe@sandia.govSandia National Laboratories , Albuquerque, NM 87123, USA ; esilbe@sandia.govFireballs (bolides) are high-energy luminous phenomena produced when meteoroids and small asteroids enter Earth’s atmosphere at hypersonic speeds, often resulting in fragmentation or complete disintegration accompanied by significant energy release. The resulting bolide light curves capture temporal brightness variations as these objects traverse increasingly dense atmospheric layers, providing essential information on meteoroid entry dynamics, fragmentation behavior, and atmospheric energy deposition processes. The Center for Near-Earth Object Studies’ (CNEOS) continuously expanding fireball database offers a globally comprehensive archive of bolide events, including light curves and associated metadata. Events associated with infrasound detections allow direct correlations between acoustic signatures and light curve features, therefore enabling detailed analyses of fragmentation dynamics and energy deposition. Here, we introduce Bolide Light-curve Analysis and Discrimination Explorer (BLADE), a robust and high-fidelity framework specifically designed to analyze bolide light curves for objects detected from space. BLADE incorporates a processing pipeline integrating Savitzky–Golay filtering, prominence-based peak detection, and gradient analysis, enabling systematic identification and classification of fragmentation events and their associated energy release characteristics. Preliminary results demonstrate that BLADE reliably distinguishes distinct bolide behaviors, providing an objective, scalable methodology for characterization and analysis of large bolide light curve data sets. This foundational work establishes a novel pathway for advanced bolide research, with promising applications in planetary defense and global atmospheric monitoring. Future research should adopt an integrative approach combining CNEOS optical data with complementary infrasound measurements, further clarifying relationships between bolide energy deposition and acoustic signatures, thus refining our understanding of meteoroid and asteroid atmospheric entry processes.https://doi.org/10.3847/1538-3881/adeb55AsteroidsMeteoroidsLight curvesLight curve classification |
| spellingShingle | Elizabeth A. Silber Vedant Sawal BLADE: An Automated Framework for Classifying Light Curves from the Center for Near-Earth Object Studies Fireball Database The Astronomical Journal Asteroids Meteoroids Light curves Light curve classification |
| title | BLADE: An Automated Framework for Classifying Light Curves from the Center for Near-Earth Object Studies Fireball Database |
| title_full | BLADE: An Automated Framework for Classifying Light Curves from the Center for Near-Earth Object Studies Fireball Database |
| title_fullStr | BLADE: An Automated Framework for Classifying Light Curves from the Center for Near-Earth Object Studies Fireball Database |
| title_full_unstemmed | BLADE: An Automated Framework for Classifying Light Curves from the Center for Near-Earth Object Studies Fireball Database |
| title_short | BLADE: An Automated Framework for Classifying Light Curves from the Center for Near-Earth Object Studies Fireball Database |
| title_sort | blade an automated framework for classifying light curves from the center for near earth object studies fireball database |
| topic | Asteroids Meteoroids Light curves Light curve classification |
| url | https://doi.org/10.3847/1538-3881/adeb55 |
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