A couple in Canada were returning home from walking their dogs some months ago when they found a burst of dusty debris on their walkway. They turned to their security-camera footage for answers and found it showed a mysterious puff of smoke appearing on the tidy walkway where the mystery splotch was.
The source of the splotch was officially registered on Monday as the Charlottetown meteorite, named after the city on Prince Edward Island, in eastern Canada, where it landed.
Only 69 meteorites have been found and registered in the country, and this was the first recorded in Prince Edward Island, according to the Meteoritical Society, an organization that records all known meteorites. The Charlottetown meteorite was more significant because of the security-camera footage, said Chris Herd, a professor at the University of Alberta and the curator of its meteorite collection.
“To the best of my knowledge, it’s the first time that a meteorite hitting the surface of the Earth has been recorded on video with sound,” said Dr. Herd, who identified the space rock after the couple sent the video to the University of Alberta’s meteorite reporting system.
About 99.9 percent of the rocks that people have submitted to the reporting system have turned out not to be meteorites, Dr. Herd said. When he saw the video from July 25, 2024, which showed a small explosion with a sound resembling crackling ice or glass, he thought that what it documented was significant.
For the homeowner, Joe Velaidum, the video did not just capture something of value to science but also recorded a brush with luck. Just before the meteorite hit, Mr. Velaidum and his partner, Laura Kelly, had left the home to walk their dogs, The Canadian Press, a news agency, reported.
“I was standing literally over the exact spot where the meteorite hit just a couple minutes later,” Mr. Velaidum said. “I have been thinking about it a lot because, you know, when you have a near-death experience it kind of shocks you.”
In another fortuitous bit of timing, the meteorite crashed about 10 days before Dr. Herd was scheduled to go to Prince Edward Island for a family vacation. Dr. Herd took a side trip with his wife, older son and his son’s girlfriend to meet Mr. Velaidum and Ms. Kelly and to evaluate the debris they had collected.
Using a home kitchen scale and a teaspoon, Dr. Herd took measurements with the help of his son.
It is rare to find a meteorite, and to capture its fall to Earth, but, Dr. Herd said, “when it literally ends up on your front doorstep, it’s obviously a lot easier.”
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