We will catch extraterrestrial objects with a net: the era of predictions and finds of fireballs has begun

Scientists Detect Meteor in the Sky 7 Hours of Reentry and Found It on Earth Days Later

The meter asteroid 2023CX1 (Sar2667), which was discovered by astronomers 7 hours before the collision with the Earth on February 12, was filmed during the fall and found a few days later in the form of a 100-gram fragment in northwestern France. According to stargazers, the era of predictions and discoveries of bright fireballs has begun.

How many of them can roll under our feet! Even 10-20 years ago, hardly anyone could have said with certainty that people would ever learn to catch “star showers” ​​- small asteroids or fragments of large ones.

Let’s go in order. Astronomers have learned to track asteroids with a diameter of several hundred meters or more, but as for their smaller counterparts – several tens of meters – “hunting” for them has become possible only since 2008. With the current meter asteroid 2023CX1 (Sar2667), there are already seven of them. But Sar2667 is only the third of them, which, after being discovered by astronomers, was tracked during the fall and later found on Earth.

Recall that the first of the trinity was the asteroid 2008 TC3, or rather what was left of it during its flight through the dense layers of the earth’s atmosphere. It was a solid pebble from 2 to 5 meters in diameter, which was discovered the day before the fall by the staff of the Mount Lemmon Observatory (USA). It flew into our atmosphere on October 7, 2008 at 5.46 am Moscow time, then broke up into fragments, most of which burned down. However, one of the largest, several hundred grams, was found in Sudan thanks to the calculated trajectory of its fall.

The second discovery of the previously discovered asteroid 2018 LA (or rather, its meteorite that fell to Earth) made visitors to the Central Kalahari National Park in Botswana happy. The rock entered Earth’s atmosphere on June 2, 2018 and exploded over Africa.

And just the other day, the news spread around the world about the third discovery of a body discovered the day before entering the atmosphere in the form of a fireball (the so-called celestial bodies visually larger than the planet Venus).

It was discovered on February 12, around midnight Moscow time, by astronomer Christian Scharnetsky at the Piskestetö Observation Station in Hungary with a 60 cm telescope. The celestial body corresponded to the 19th magnitude, was no more than a meter in diameter. According to AstroAlert, experts tracked the trajectory of its fall, filmed how it flew at a speed of 14 km / s, and calculated the place where, theoretically, one could search for what was left of it. According to the calculated coordinates – 49.8°N, 0.4°E – the stone must have fallen in the area of ​​the strait between England and France.

A group of French students-enthusiasts immediately went to the proposed place. Surprisingly, the calculation data exactly matched reality, and the search engines found a 100-gram meteorite in the Seine-Maritime department in northwestern France (Normandy). The lucky one was 18-year-old student Lois Leblanc. Experts considered it a great success that the stone, the flight of which was observed directly over the English Channel, nevertheless fell on land!

Considering that earlier 30-40 meteorite falls per year were recorded all over the world, now scientists expect this figure to increase. In addition, such not too large, but still dangerous for cities, asteroids such as Chelyabinsk (diameter 18 meters) can be detected in advance with a greater probability. This will allow predicting the place of their fall and preparing the inhabitants for it.