Back to article listing |
![]() |
Shortcut to Space Stuff |
Gardiol, D., Barghini, D., Buzzoni, A., Carbognani, A., Di Carlo, M., Di Martino, M., Knapic, C., Londero, E., Pratesi, G., Rasetti, S., Riva, W., Salerno, R., Stirpe, G. M., Valsecchi, G. B., Volpicelli, C. A., Zorba, S., Colas, F., Zanda, B., Bouley, S., Jeanne, S. Malgoyre, A., Birlan, M., Blanpain, C., Gattacceca, J., Lecubin, J., Marmo, C., Rault, J. L., Vaubaillon, J., Vernazza, P., Affaticati, F., Albani, M., Andreis, A., Ascione, G., Avoscan, T., Bacci, P., Baldini, R., Balestrero, A., Basso, S., Bellitto, R., Belluso, M., Benna, C., Bernardi, F., Bertaina, M. E., Betti, L., Bonino, R., Boros, K., Bussi, A., Carli, C., Carriero, T., Cascone, E., Cattaneo, C., Cellino, A., Colombetti, P., Colombi, E., Costa, M., Cremonese, G., Cricchio, D., D'Agostino, G., D'Elia, M., De Maio, M., Demaria, P., Di Dato, A., Di Luca, R., Federici, F., Gagliarducci, V., Gerardi, A., Giuli, G., Guidetti, D., Interrante, G., Lazzarin, M., Lera, S., Leto, G., Licchelli, D., Lippolis, F., Manca, F., Mancuso, S., Mannucci, F., Masi, R., Masiero, S., Meucci, S., Misiano, A., Moggi Cecchi, V., Molinari, E., Monari, J., Montemaggi, M., Montesarchio, M., Monti, G., Morini, P., Nastasi, A., Pace, E., Pardini, R., Pavone, M., Pegoraro, A., Pietronave, S., Pisanu, T., Pugno, N., Repetti, U., Rigoni, M., Rizzi, N., Romeni, C., Romeo, M., Rubinetti, S., Russo, P., Salvati, F., Selvestrel, D., Serra, R., Simoncelli, C., Smareglia, R., Soldi, M., Stanga, R., Strafella, F., Suvieri, M., Taricco, C., Tigani Sava, G., Tombelli, M., Trivero, P., Umbriaco, G., Vairetti, R., Valente, G., Volpini, P., Zagarella, R. & Zollo, A.: |
"Cavezzo, the first Italian meteorite recovered by the PRISMA fireball network.
Orbit, trajectory, and strewn-field" 2021, Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 501, 1215 |
![]() |
Summary:
Two meteorite pieces have been recovered in Italy, near the town of Cavezzo (Modena), on 2020 January 4th. The associated
fireball was observed on the evening of New Year’s Day 2020 by eight all-sky cameras of the PRISMA fireball network, a partner
of FRIPON. The computed trajectory had an inclination angle of approximately 68o and a velocity at infinity of 12.8 km/s.
Together with the relatively low terminal height, estimated as 21.5 km, those values were indicating the significant possibility of
a meteorite dropping event, as additionally confirmed by the non-zero residual total mass. The strewn-field was computed taking
into account the presence of two bright light flashes, revealing that the meteoroid had been very likely subject to fragmentation.
Three days after the event, two samples, weighing 3.1 and 52.2 g, were collected as a result of a dedicated field search and thanks
to the involvement of the local people. The two pieces were immediately recognized as freshly fallen fragments of meteorite. The
computed orbital elements, compared with the ones of known Near-Earth Asteroids from the NEODyS database, are compatible
with one asteroid only; 2013 VC10. The estimated original mass of the meteoroid, 3.5 kg, and size, approximately 13 cm, is so
far the smallest among the current 35 cases in which meteorites were recovered from precise strewn-field computation thanks to
observational data. This result demonstrates the effectiveness of accurate processing of fireball network data even on challenging
events generated by small size meteoroids.
|
![]() |
Enhanced HTML/PDF version at the MNRAS site (*) (*) May require access password |
![]() |
Local link to the PDF version (900 Kb)
(For personal use only) |
![]() |
![]() |
Figure 1 -
The two recovered samples of the Cavezzo meteorite. On the right-hand side, the first recovered fragment
(F1, 3.1 g); on the left-hand side, the second and larger one (F2, 52.2 g).
|
![]() | Figure 2 -
Details of the larger fragment F2 of the Cavezzo meteorite. (a) White streaks occur on one edge of F2, suggesting
on-ground breakup of the original body; (b) photomosaic of polarizing optical microscope images (transmitted light,
crossed polars) of a thin sections obtained from F2 (field width 12?mm) showing chondrules and chondrule fragments
distributed in the matrix.
|
![]() |
Figure 3 -
Map of the PRISMA stations (white dots) involved in the detection of the IT20200101 fireball. The red line
plots the fireball bright trajectory projected on the ground, and white circles enclose the fireball trail
seen by each camera (reconstructed from video records). Please notice that fireball trails are oriented
accordingly to the specific in-situ hardware installation, and may be not strictly consistent with one
another (all-sky images, from which meteor trails are cropped, were approximately oriented with N direction
upward and E direction rightward). Background map was generated using the
Matplotlib Basemap Toolkit (Hunter 2007).
|
![]() |
Figure 4 -
Results of trajectory computation and dynamical model for the IT20200101 fireball.
(a) Vertical projection of the atmospheric trajectory; (b) vertical residuals of the atmospheric trajectory;
(c) fireball velocity with respect to ground; (d) aerodynamic pressure (Equation 1);
(e) absolute magnitude (at 100 km, zenith of the observer). The x-axis reports the time elapsed from
the beginning of the visible flight captured by the eight cameras. The two vertical dashed lines
indicate the times at which the two flares occurred, 3.95 and 4.15 s, respectively. In every panel,
grey points plot measured or computed values for the single stations, whereas the red line plots
the nominal fit values (a–c) or a smoothed version of grey points (d,e). Red shaded area encloses
1σ uncertainty.
|
![]() |
Figure 5 -
Wind vertical profile at 18 UTC in the Cavezzo area used for the strewn-field computation.
The red arrow shows the fireball motion direction on the ground.
|
![]() |
Figure 6 -
Strewn-field for the Cavezzo meteorite fragments, as a function of different mass-section ratio values
(D, dashed black lines) from 30 up to 200 kg/m2. The brown thick line shows the nominal impact
point and the shaded areas enclose 1σ (red), 2σ (orange), and 3σ (yellow)
uncertainties in the transverse direction. The purple star shows where the two Cavezzo fragments F1 and F2
were recovered, and the thick red line plots the terminal part of the bright flight trajectory, projected on
the ground. Background map data copyright of OpenStreetMap.
|
![]() |
Figure 7 -
The reconstructed heliocentric orbit for the progenitor meteoroid of the Cavezzo meteorite (red ellipse)
as seen from the ecliptic north pole and projected on to the ecliptic plane, together with the 1s uncertainty band
(shaded red area). The blue ellipse plots the 2013 VC10 orbit (for which orbital elements are provided by the NEODyS
data base). Remaining ellipses plot Solar system planets’ orbits up to Jupiter, and the black dots indicate
their position along the orbit at the time of the IT20200101 fireball. The black small dots symbolically
represent the asteroid Main Belt.
|
![]() |
Figure 8 -
The radiants of the Cavezzo meteoroid (red dot) and of 2013 VC10 (cyan dot) in an equal area projection of the sky
centred on the apex of the Earth motion (a) and on the opposition (b); the angular coordinates are ecliptic longitude
minus the longitude of the Sun, and ecliptic latitude. The orange dots are the radiants of the simulated impactors of
Chesley & Spahr (2004), while the black dots are the radiants of the 20 meteorites listed in Granvik & Brown (2018).
|
Tables | |
![]() |
Table 1 -
List and relevant data of ‘pedigree’ meteorites, i.e. for which recovery was accompanied by a sufficient
set of sporadic or systematic observations (optical, radio, infrasound, seismic, satellite), allowing
for pre-impact orbit reconstruction. From left- to right-hand side: name of the meteorite (approved by
The Meteoritical Society), date of fall, pre-atmospheric velocity and mass, estimated terminal mass,
meteorite total known weight (TKW) recovered on the ground, minimum absolute magnitude recorded, impact
energy (equivalent tons of TNT, 1 T = 4.187 × 109 J), fireball
network which provided the observations (if any)
and references for table data. The uncertainties associated to the values of the table are not given here
for simplicity, but can be found in the respective references.
|
![]() |
Table 2 -
PRISMA stations that observed the IT20200101 fireball. From left to right: station name,
latitude, longitude, and elevation above sea level.
|
![]() |
Table 3 -
IT20200101 fireball parameters obtained from triangulation and dynamical model. The two columns refer
to values at the beginning and end of the bright flight, respectively (when applicable).
Values of mass and diameter are computed from the mass-section ratio D (in the hypothesis of pure ablation) by
assuming a spherical shape of the meteoroid and for the measured meteorite bulk density of 3.322 g/cm-3.
|
![]() |
Table 4 -
Data regarding the nominal impact points with different D final values. From top to bottom: final mass-section value, latitude and longitude
of the impact point, shift parallel (L) and orthogonal (X) to motion direction of the bright flight and on-ground impact velocity.
|
![]() |
Table 5 -
Orbital elements (top) and proper elements (bottom) of the Cavezzo meteoroid (left) and of 2013 VC10
from NEODyS (right).
|
Back to article listing |
![]() |
Shortcut to Space Stuff |
AB/May 2021 |