The daylight fireball of June 25, 2022, leading to a meteorite fall and find near Pusté Úľany, Slovakia
Lukáš Shrbený, Jiří Borovička, Pavel Spurný, Mike Hankey
MAPS, Version of Record online: 04 March 2026
“We present detailed analysis of a daytime fireball observed on June 25, 2022, which is based on four instrumental video records. The atmospheric trajectory was observed from 69.5 to 21.8 km with a slope of 57.1 degrees to the surface. During the flight, the original body weighing 16 kg fragmented four times and the initial velocity of 19.84 km s−1 decreased to 5 km s−1. The determined heliocentric orbit has a semimajor axis of 1.727 AU, a perihelion distance of 1.00878 AU, and one of the highest inclinations among the meteorite orbits, which is 27.14 degrees. Based on our computations, one meteorite was found in the predicted impact area by Polish searcher Mateusz Żmija on August 20, 2022. The recovered meteorite, Pusté Úľany, is an ordinary chondrite H5 with a mass of 8.6 grams and a bulk density of 3.41 g cm−3.”
