Bright fireball over Poland

Late evening of July 7th, a bright fireball lit up the sky over southwestern Poland. The meteor has been registered by the Polish Fireball Network (PFN).

The first images obtained by cameras placed in a station in the village of Podgorzyn - operated by Tomasz Krzyzanowski - were very interesting because they showed that the object crossed the greater part of the sky. Recordings of the cameras working in a station in Szamotuly operated by Maciej Reszelski also showed a very bright and long trace at low altitude.

Another camera working as a Fireball Shield in the town of Nysa also registered the object. Due to the noise of the latter camera, it was difficult to determine the exact coordinates of the trace in the sky.

The analysis of the collected material establish that the phenomenon began in the Wroclaw area at an altitude of 88.2 km. After 1.5 seconds, at an altitude of 74 km there was a flash of light of about 1 mag, after which the meteor clearly brightened. Perhaps it was then that a fragmentation of the object occurred.

For the last two seconds there were two fragments clearly visible moving at different speeds and with fast decreasing brightness. The whole phenomenon lasted for 5.2 seconds and ended up in the vicinity of the city of Zielona Gora, at an altitude of 44.5 km. Its trace had a length of up to 135 km.

The initial velocity at the entrance of the object in the atmosphere was 27.1 km/s, and after about 3 seconds began to rapidly decline when the body reached a height of 60 km. At the end it amounted to 13.6 km/s. This is too fast though to make it possible for a small fragment to reach the ground; the whole object burned upon entering the atmosphere.

Experts agreed that it came from the vicinity of Jupiter.

You can read the full report of the observation, as prepared by PKiM, here (in Polish).