English

The Great Chinese Fireball of December 22, 2020

Earth and Planetary Astrophysics 2021-03-11 v2

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. 31.931.9^{\circ} N; Long. 96.296.2^{\circ} E). In this paper 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 (5±25^{\circ} \pm 2^{\circ}) 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 probable strewn field extend between two points with coordinates (+31.3+31.3^\circ N; 96.396.3^\circ E) and (+30.3+30.3^\circ N; 96.596.5^\circ E), for a total area of about 4000 km2\textrm{km}^2. This large extension is a direct consequence of the low inclination of the trajectory. Given the unknown uncertainty of the CNEOS's data, these results should be taken with caution.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2101.02457,
  title  = {The Great Chinese Fireball of December 22, 2020},
  author = {Albino Carbognani},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2101.02457},
  year   = {2021}
}

Comments

7 pages, 4 figures, manuscript v2 submitted to EPJPlus