Cavezzo, the first Italian meteorite recovered by the PRISMA fireball network. Orbit, trajectory, and strewn-field

Abstract

Two meteorite pieces have been recovered in Italy, near the town of Cavezzo (Modena), on 4th January 2020. 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 68○ and a velocity at infinity of 12.8 km s−1. 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 g 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 recognised 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.

FRIPON: a worldwide network to track incoming meteoroids

“…Among these events, only 1 led to the recovery of meteorite fragments. This event occurred near Cavezzo in Italy (Gardiol et al 2020) and was detected by PRISMA cameras. Further details regarding the meteorite and its recovery will be presented in a forthcoming paper.…”

“…Taking the example of the 1 January 2020 fall in Italy (Gardiol et al 2020), our determined strewn field with a 99% confidence level consisted of a thin strip 5.6 km long and 100 m wide. The actual meteorite was found only 200 meters from the central line of this strip.…”

“…The FRIPON network is coupled in France with the Vigie-Ciel citizen science program, the aim of which is to involve the general public in the search for meteorites in order to improve their recovery rate. In the present paper, we first describe the technology of the FRIPON network and its architecture, and finally we give the first results obtained after four years of observations and report on the first meteorite recovery in Italy 2 (Gardiol et al 2020).…”

The great Chinese fireball of December 22, 2020

“…3). The vertical resolution of this model is height-dependent, from 100 m near the ground to about 7 km around 20 km height, but sufficient to a first raw estimate of the strewn field position with the same method used for the Cavezzo meteorite [4].…”

“…The size of the stars is approximately proportional to the size of the fragment. The north is on top, the west on the left field computation we have used the same process applied to two Italian fireballs, IT20170530 [3] and IT20200101, which led to recovery of the Cavezzo meteorite by the Italian PRISMA Project [4].…”