A spectacular fireball lit up the night sky in Central Europe on Friday night (June 24th). At 2.10 a.m. the meteor could be seen in Austria, Germany, Slovakia, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovenia and Italy, said Ludovic Ferrière from the Natural History Museum (NHM) Vienna. According to the expert, the meteor should not have burned up completely, Czech astronomers assume that parts of it have reached the ground in Carinthia.
Using photo and video recordings from 17 stations of the European fireball observation network, researchers from the Astronomical Institute of the Czech Academy of Sciences were able not only to precisely describe the meteor’s trajectory through the atmosphere, but also to obtain information about its composition. Accordingly, it was a stone meteorite.
Photographed in the Hausruck district
The fireball was also captured by a suite of specialized meteor cameras from the AllSky7 fireball network and meteor observation network FRIPON (Fireball Recovery and InterPlanetary Observation Network), explained Ferrière, who is curator of the NHM’s meteorite collection.
A photo on the NHM platform, where sightings of this kind can be reported, shows the fireball in the night sky over Upper Austria. Uploaded by Nikolaus K., the recording was apparently made from a webcam at the Fornach-Hochlehen site in the village of Seppenröth near Frankenburg am Hausruck (Vöcklabruck district).
Heading south at 18 kilometers per second
The celestial body, weighing around 120 kilograms, entered the earth’s atmosphere at 2.10 a.m. and began to glow at a height of around 90 kilometers above the town of Zanitzen (Murtal district, Styria). At that time, he was moving at a speed of just over 18 kilometers per second and continued to fly in a southerly direction. The celestial body shone as a fireball for around 5.5 seconds over a distance of almost 83 kilometers.
Most of the original material may have burned up in the atmosphere. Nevertheless, the Czech astronomers assume that “quite a lot” of material could have reached the earth’s surface. They have identified the area in which fragments of the original body, weighing up to a few kilograms, could be found: It is a narrow strip between the place Eis in the municipality of Ruden and Draurain (Völkermarkt district) in Carinthia, as the researchers on their communicated website.
Search in Carinthia
Ferrière set out first thing Saturday morning to look for meteorites in the area. Because there is no law in Austria that regulates their find, he fears that any parts will end up in the hands of private meteorite collectors and not in the museum. He asks the population for help in the search and for information and photos in the case of unusual rock finds in the region (mailto: ludovic.ferriere@nhm.at).
Source: Nachrichten
