Fireballs over Western Europe on May 30 and June 1

On May 30th (21h 09min UT) and June 1st (22h 38min UT), two bright fireballs crossed the Europeans skies. Both events have been caught on videos. More than 100 witnesses reported these events through the IMO Fireball Online Report program.

May 30th, 2017, at 21h 09min UT Fireball – Italy

The first fireball event occurred on May 30th, 2017 – 21:09UT, and was reported by 16 people from Northern Italy, Western Croatioa and Southern Austria.

The event was caught by 8 different cameras located in Northern Italy:

• 3 PRISMA network cameras from the 3 Italian cities: Rovigo, Pacienza and Navacchio
• 2 IMTN (Italian Meteor and TLE Network) cameras from Ferrara and Cuneo
• 3 UAI-sm (Unione Astrofili Italiani – sezione meteore) cameras from Faenza and Venezia Lido.

Videos show a slow moving object lasting nearly 10 seconds in the sky, featuring several very bright flashes of light (some being nearly as bright as the Full Moon) during its flight.

As shown in the map below, the estimated trajectory plotted from the witness reports shows the meteor was traveling from South to the North. This trajectory has been confirmed by a more detailed analysis of videos recordings lead by Enrico Stomeo and Maurizio Eltri. Stomeo and Eltri’s analysis concludes the traveling azimuth of the meteoroid was 190°. The meteor started to become visible at an altitude close to 100km above the surroundings of Faenda, Italy and disappeared at an altitude of 22km, between the cities of Rovigo and Chioggia.

June 1st, 22h 18min UT Fireball – UK & France

The second fireball was reported by more than 90 visual observers from North-Western France and UK. This fireball occurred a bit more than 48h after the first one, on June 1st, 22:18 UT. This meteor has been caught on video from the UK by camera belonging to UKMON (UK Meteor Observation Network) in the city of Wilcot and a web camera located in Dawlish, on the English Channel coast.

The fireball was visible for more than 5 seconds, and its light path was punctuated by numerous bright flashes. The estimated trajectory plotted from the witness reports shows the meteor from East to West. It means that residual meteorites, if any, must be laying on the bottom of the sea right now.