Brilliant Fireball Over Northern Italy 8 April 2022

78 reports from 5 countries in Europe

The International Meteor Organization has received 78 reports so far of a fireball event that occurred over the the Northern Italy on 8 April 2022 around 22:12 GMT. Event 2022-2244 was mainly seen from Italy, but we also received reports from Switzerland, Germany, France and Austria. The preliminary trajectory indicates a southeast to northwest path starting near the town of Brescia and ending near Volgelberg, Switzerland.

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Fireball, Bolide?

Several thousand meteors of fireball magnitude occur in the Earth’s atmosphere each day. The vast majority of these, however, occur over the oceans and uninhabited regions, and a good many are masked by daylight. Those that occur at night also stand little chance of being detected due to the relatively low numbers of persons out to notice them.

Additionally, the brighter the fireball, the more rare is the event. As a general thumb rule, there are only about 1/3 as many fireballs present for each successively brighter magnitude class, following an exponential decrease. Experienced observers can expect to see only about 1 fireball of magnitude -6 or better for every 200 hours of meteor observing, while a fireball of magnitude -4 can be expected about once every 20 hours or so.