Roberto Gorelli points our attention at a recently published meteor related paper:

The Great Chinese Fireball of December 22, 2020

This article has been submitted for publication by Albino Carbognani.

 

Abstract: On December 22, 2020 at about 23h 23m 33s UTC a very bright fireball was seen in the sky of south-eastern China. The fireball lasted for several seconds and ended with an atmospheric explosion that was detected by US surveillance satellites. According to CNEOS’s data, the fireball moved with a mean speed of 13.6 km/s and exploded at an altitude of about 35.5 km (Lat. 31.9° N; Long. 96.2° E). In this paper, using satellites data only, we estimate the atmospheric trajectory, the heliocentric orbit and the strewn fields for different mass/section ratio of the fragments. The trajectory was about from north to south and with low inclination with respect to the local surface. The explosion height appear consistent with a fragmented rocky body and the heliocentric orbit supports an asteroidal origin. The strewn field extend between two points with coordinates (+31.3° N; 96.3° E) and (+30.3° N; 96.5° E), for a total area of about 4000 km^2 . However, given the unknown uncertainty of the satellites data, these results should be taken with caution.

 

You can download this paper for free:  https://arxiv.org/pdf/2101.02457.pdf (6 pages).

 

Older meteor library news:

2021

2020

2019

2018

2017