The Košice meteorite fall: Atmospheric trajectory, fragmentation, and orbit

Borovička, J.; Tóth, Juraj; Igaz, Antal; Spurný, Pavel; Kalenda, Pavel; Haloda, J.; Svoreň, J.; Kornoš, Leonard; Silber, E. A.; Brown, Peter; Husárik, M.

doi:10.1111/maps.12078

Cited by 105 publications

(127 citation statements)

References 32 publications

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“…In this case we used the best 12 photographic and 4 radiometric records for final analysis. Since these fireballs were exceptional, we modeled them with our semiempirical fragmentation model (Borovička et al 2013). The model fits radiometric curves and deceleration.…”

Section: En311015_180520 and En311015_231301 -Two Brightest Tauridsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Discovery of a new branch of the Taurid meteoroid stream as a real source of potentially hazardous bodies

Spurný

Borovička

Mucke³

et al. 2017

A&A

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Taurid meteor shower produces prolonged but usually low activity every October and November. In some years, however, the activity is significantly enhanced. Previous studies based on long-term activity statistics concluded that the enhancement is caused by a swarm of meteoroids locked in 7:2 resonance with Jupiter. Here we present precise data on 144 Taurid fireballs observed by new digital cameras of the European Fireball Network in the enhanced activity year 2015. Orbits of 113 fireballs show common characteristics and form together a well defined orbital structure, which we call new branch and which was evidently responsible for the enhanced activity. This new branch is part of Southern Taurids and was encountered by the Earth between October 25 and November 17. We found that this branch is characterized by longitudes of perihelia lying between 155.9-160• and latitudes of perihelia between 4.2-5.7• . Semimajor axes are between 2.23-2.28 AU and indeed overlap with the 7:2 resonance. Eccentricities are in wide range 0.80-0.90. The most eccentric orbits with lowest perihelion distances were encountered at the beginning of the activity period. The orbits form a concentric ring in the inner solar system. The masses of the observed meteoroids were in a wide range from 0.1 g to more than 1000 kg. We found that all meteoroids larger than 300 g were very fragile (type IIIB), while those smaller than 30 g were much more compact (mostly of type II and some of them even type I). Based on orbital characteristics, we argue that asteroids 2015 TX24 and 2005 UR, both of diameters 200-300 m, are direct members of the new branch. It is therefore very likely that the new branch contains also numerous still not discovered objects of decameter or even larger size. Since asteroids of sizes of tens to hundreds meters pose a threat to the ground even if they are intrinsically weak, impact hazard increases significantly when the Earth encounters the Taurid new branch every few years. Further studies leading to better description of this real source of potentially hazardous objects, which can be large enough to cause significant regional or even continental damage on the Earth, are therefore extremely important.

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Section: En311015_180520 and En311015_231301 -Two Brightest Tauridsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Discovery of a new branch of the Taurid meteoroid stream as a real source of potentially hazardous bodies

Spurný

Borovička

Mucke³

et al. 2017

A&A

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“…for the Chelyabinsk airburst, based on indirect illumination measured from video records. The brightness is an average derived from indirect scattered sky brightness from six videos proximal to the airburst, corrected for the sensor gamma setting, autogain, range and airmass extinction, following the procedure used for other airburst light curves generated from video 24,25 . The light curve has been normalized using the US government sensor data peak brightness value of 2.7 3 10 13 W sr…”

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confidence: 99%

A 500-kiloton airburst over Chelyabinsk and an enhanced hazard from small impactors

Brown

Assink

Astiz

et al. 2013

Nature

379

308

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Most large (over a kilometre in diameter) near-Earth asteroids are now known, but recognition that airbursts (or fireballs resulting from nuclear-weapon-sized detonations of meteoroids in the atmosphere) have the potential to do greater damage 1 than previously thought has shifted an increasing portion of the residual impact risk (the risk of impact from an unknown object) to smaller objects 2 . Above the threshold size of impactor at which the atmosphere absorbs sufficient energy to prevent a ground impact, most of the damage is thought to be caused by the airburst shock wave 3 , but owing to lack of observations this is uncertain 4,5 . Here we report an analysis of the damage from the airburst of an asteroid about 19 metres (17 to 20 metres) in diameter southeast of Chelyabinsk, Russia, on 15 February 2013, estimated to have an energy equivalent of approximately 500 (6100) kilotons of trinitrotoluene (TNT, where 1 kiloton of TNT 54.185310 12 joules). We show that a widely referenced technique 4-6 of estimating airburst damage does not reproduce the observations, and that the mathematical relations 7 based on the effects of nuclear weapons-almost always used with this technique-overestimate blast damage. This suggests that earlier damage estimates 5,6 near the threshold impactor size are too high. We performed a global survey of airbursts of a kiloton or more (including Chelyabinsk), and find that the number of impactors with diameters of tens of metres may be an order of magnitude higher than estimates based on other techniques 8,9 . This suggests a non-equilibrium (if the population were in a long-term collisional steady state the size-frequency distribution would either follow a single power law or there must be a size-dependent bias in other surveys) in the near-Earth asteroid population for objects 10 to 50 metres in diameter, and shifts more of the residual impact risk to these sizes. for the Chelyabinsk airburst, based on indirect illumination measured from video records. The brightness is an average derived from indirect scattered sky brightness from six videos proximal to the airburst, corrected for the sensor gamma setting, autogain, range and airmass extinction, following the procedure used for other airburst light curves generated from video 24,25 . The light curve has been normalized using the US government sensor data peak brightness value of 2.7 3 10 13 W sr 21, corresponding to an absolute astronomical magnitude of 228 in the silicon bandpass. The individual video light curves deviate by less than one magnitude between times 22 and 11.5 with larger deviations outside this interval. Time zero corresponds to 03:20:32.2 UTC on 15 February 2013. b, The energy deposition per unit height for the Chelyabinsk airburst, based on video data. The conversion to absolute energy deposition per unit path length assumes a blackbody emission of 6,000 K and bolometric efficiency of 17%, the same as the assumptions used to convert earlier US government sensor information to energy 26 . The heights are computed us...

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“…The initial height of the Košice fireball was observed to be fairly low at 68.3 km (Borovicka J., et al, 2013). At this altitude, the atmospheric drag normally predominates over that of Earth's gravity (Gritsevich M. , 2010).…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 97%

“…Buzzard Coulee (Milley, 2010) Grimsby (Brown P., et al, 2011) Neuschwanstein (Spurny, Oberst, & Heinlein, 2003) Sutter's Mill (Jenniskens P. et al, 2012) Chelyabinsk (Popova, O.P., Jenniskens, P. et al, 2013) Košice (Borovicka J., et al, 2013) Meteor Toolkit is an executable file along with some additional dependent libraries. Also note, although Meteor Toolkit uses SPICE libraries and subroutines, they do not need to be compiled as they are assembled into a portable dll.…”

Section: Namementioning

confidence: 99%

Orbit determination based on meteor observations using numerical integration of equations of motion

Dmitriev

Lupovka

Gritsevich

2015

Planetary and Space Science

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Orbit determination based on meteor observations using numerical integration of equations of motion Dmitriev, Vasily Dmitriev , V , Lupovka , V & Gritsevich , M 2015 , ' Orbit determination based on meteor observations using numerical integration of equations of motion ' , Planetary and Space Science , vol. 117 , AbstractRecently, there has been a worldwide proliferation of instruments and networks dedicated to observing meteors, including international airborne campaigns (Vaubaillon, J. et al., 2015) and possible future space-based monitoring systems (Bouquet A., et al., 2014). There has been a corresponding rapid rise in high quality data accumulating annually. In this paper, we present a method embodied in a software program, which can effectively and accurately process these data in an automated mode and discover the pre-impact orbit and possibly the origin or parent body of a meteoroid or asteroid. The required input parameters are the topocentric pre-atmospheric velocity vector and the coordinates of the atmospheric entry point of the meteoroid, i.e. the beginning point of visual path of a meteor, in the an Earth centered-Earth fixed coordinate system, the International Terrestrial Reference Frame (ITRF). Our method is based on strict coordinate transformation from the ITRF to an inertial reference frame and on numerical integration of the equations of motion for a perturbed two-body problem. Basic accelerations perturbing a meteoroid's orbit and their influence on the orbital elements are also studied and demonstrated. Our method is then compared with several published studies that utilized variations of a traditional analytical technique, the zenith attraction method, which corrects for the direction of the meteor's trajectory and its apparent velocity due to Earth's gravity. We then demonstrate the proposed technique on new observational data obtained from the Finnish Fireball Network (FFN) as well as on simulated data. In addition, we propose a method of analysis of error propagation, based on general rule of covariance transformation.

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The Košice meteorite fall: Atmospheric trajectory, fragmentation, and orbit

Cited by 105 publications

References 32 publications

Discovery of a new branch of the Taurid meteoroid stream as a real source of potentially hazardous bodies

Discovery of a new branch of the Taurid meteoroid stream as a real source of potentially hazardous bodies

A 500-kiloton airburst over Chelyabinsk and an enhanced hazard from small impactors

Orbit determination based on meteor observations using numerical integration of equations of motion

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