On 23 February, 2020 at 19:50 UT a very bright fireball lit up the night sky over Hungary. There were lot of observations around the country which described it as an electric green, sparkling phenomenon rolling down slowly from the sky. As always, I collected the online reachable pictures from meteorological sites including not just Hungarians but Austrians too. Thanks to their persistent work Jónás Károly (Soroksár) and Landy-Gyebnár Mónika (Veszprém) caught the meteor on precise photos.
Photo by Jónás Károly from Soroksár
Photo by Landy-Gyebnár Mónika from veszprém
Unfortunately it was close but no cigar… It began emit light at 85 km, the striking angle was 42 degree, faded and disappeared around 28 km. The trajectory’s end would be low enough for meteorite dropping but the original 8 kg body was too quick with its 21 km/s and ablated almost totally for the end of the flight. There is a little chance to some 10-100g mass maybe survived but this is too small amount to be searched especially in a forested area in Mecsek. The orbit in the solar system was an ordinary Apollo type, the meteoroid came from the main belt between Mars and Jupiter.
The resulting orbital elements are:
- α = 248.6°
- δ = +79.8°
- a = 2.4 A.U.
- q = 0.984 A.U.
- e = 0.589
- ω = 190.2°
- Ω = 334.4°
- i = 27.2°
