A spectacular fireball lit up the night sky over Central Europe from Thursday to Friday. At 2:10 am, the meteor could be seen in Austria, Germany, Slovakia, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovenia and Italy, said Ludovic Ferrière of the APA’s Natural History Museum (NHM) Vienna. According to the expert, the meteor should not have burned up completely, Czech astronomers assume that parts of it hit the ground in Carinthia.
Using photo and video recordings from 17 stations on the European fireball observation network, researchers at the Astronomical Institute of the Czech Academy of Sciences were able not only to accurately describe the meteor’s trajectory through the atmosphere, but also to obtain information about its composition. So it was a stone meteorite.
The fireball was also captured by an array of specialized meteor cameras from the AllSky7 fireball network and the FRIPON (Fireball Recovery and Interplanetary Observation Network) meteor observation network, explained Ferrière, curator of the fireball collection. meteorites from the NHM.
120 pounds heavy
The celestial body, weighing about 120 kilograms, entered the Earth’s atmosphere at 2:10 am and began to shine at a height of about 90 kilometers above the city of Zanitzen (Murtal district, Styria). At that time, it was moving at a speed of just over 18 kilometers per second and continued to fly in a southerly direction. The celestial body shone like a fireball for about 5.5 seconds at a distance of almost 83 kilometers.
Most of the parent material may have burned up in the atmosphere. However, Czech astronomers surmise 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, can be found: It is a narrow strip between the town of Eis in Ruden municipality and Draurain (Völkermarkt district) in Carinthia.
Ferrière left on Saturday morning to look for meteorites in the area. As there is no law in Austria that governs its discovery, he fears that any pieces end up in the hands of private meteorite collectors rather than the museum. He asks the population for help in the search and information and photos in the case of unusual rock finds in the region – [email protected].