Puli Ilkaringuru (H5) and Ischgl (LL6) added

Puli Ilkaringuru is a H5 chondrite which fell in 2019 and was later found by the Australian Desert Fireball Network team. There is no paper yet, the orbital data are derived from the values given in the MetBull database, therefore, both the argument of perihelion and the longitude of the ascending node are not available (similar to the situation with Al-Khaddaf, Oman). I will add these values once properly published in a peer reviewed journal.

Ischgl (LL6) is a meteorite found in 1976 near the austrian village of Ischgl (close to the border with Switzerland). Only recently was it realized that a large fireball had terminated in the area, just a few years earlier, in 1970. A new publication by Gritsevich et al. suggests that this fireball is a very likely source for the Ischgl meteorite: it matches both the mass of the recovered meteorite, its find location and pristine condition. Also, the cosmogenic radionuclide and noble gas inventory of Ischgl can be brought into agreement with the inferred pre-atmospheric mass. This makes Ischgl the third-oldest meteorite (in historical sequence) with an orbit, predating the Innisfree fall by 7 years.

Full disclosure: I am a co-author on the Ischgl paper.

Santa Filomena (H5-6), Ådalen (Iron) and Al-Khadhaf (H5-6) added

I have added three new meteorites to the list, which now lists 49 meteorites with published orbits. Santa Filomena (Tosi et al., 2023, MAPS) is a H5-6 fallen in Brazil in 2020, which has a considerable recovered mass (80 kg). Ådalen (Kyrylenko et al., 2023, ApJ), from Sweden, is the first iron meteorite with an orbit. Unfortunately, an ownership dispute (see e.g. here: Karmaka.de), now in appeal, still stands in the way of a detailed analysis of the meteorite, inlcuding the exact type and its publication in a Meteoritical Bulletin (I’ll note here that given the soon-to-launch mission to 16 Pysche, it would be very interesting to know more about the orbits of iron meteorites). Finally, Al-Khadhaf (H5-6; MetBull 112), with a very small recovered mass (ca. 22 g), is the first meteorite found with the help of a new camera network recently installed in Oman.

I somehow missed Ozerki (L6)

Many meteorites with the potential for a photographic orbit have fallen since I started this page. They all go into my candidate list, and I regularly check whether any of them have been published in the mean-time. However, the process is not perfect, as the case of Ozerki demonstrates: Ozerki is an L6 that fell in June 2018 in Russia. Its orbital elements have been published by Kartashova et al. in 2020 in Planetary and Space Science, and yet, I never stumbled over the paper. Anyway, Ozerki is in the database now. If you know of any other meteorites that I missed, please let me know.

Motopi Pan / asteroid 2018 LA

A new meteorite with associated orbit has been added to the table: Motopi Pan. Although officially classified as a howardite (in the MetBull database), it is a complex HED breccia with howardite, cumulate and basaltic eucrites, as well as diogenite lithologies, as the authors write in an article published online today in MAPS (Jenniskens et al., 2021). This is only the second time (the first was Almahata Sitta in 2008) that a meter-scale asteroid was found to be on a collision course with Earth only a few hours prior to impact (the asteroid was named 2018 LA), observed as a meteor when it entered the Earth’s atmosphere, and meteorites recovered afterwards, this time in Botswana. Because of the longer observation arc, the orbit is much better constrained compared to a typical “meteorite-with-orbit” fall. The orbit strongly suggests the meteoroid was delivered via the nu-6 resonance from the large asteroid Vesta. From the combination of ejection age (= cosmic-ray exposure age, ca. 22 Ma) and shock-reset age in phosphates, Jennsikens et al. (2021) even suggest that the source crater of the impact might be Rubria, in the Venenaia impact basin on Vesta.

Full disclosure: I am a co-author on the paper. /m4

New paper accepted: Flensburg (C1-ungr.) in MAPS

A paper describing the trajectory and orbit of the Flensburg (carbonaceous, C1 ungrouped) meteorite, which fell on September 12th, 2019 in northernmost Germany, has been accepted for publication into MAPS, and the corresponding preprint uploaded on arxiv.org. The meteoroid delivering the single known piece of the Flensburg meteorite (of only 24.5 g) originates from a quite elongated orbit with a large semi-major axis (ca. 2.8 AU), which puts it right on the 5:2 orbital resonance with Jupiter, as well as in the Jupiter Family Comets field (2 < Tisserand parameter <3). It had a mass in the range of 10-20 metric tons and correspondingly, a radius of 2-3 meters. The authors suggest that based on the orbit and the very short cosmic-ray exposure age of only 7 ka (Bischoff et al., 2021), the meteoroid probably originated on a carbonaceous asteroid close to the edge of the 5:2 resonance.

Flensburg is only the fourth carbonaceous meteorite with an orbit (the others being Tagish Lake, Maribo, and Sutter’s Mill). Its interesting to note that carbonaceous meteorites are now slightly over-represented (ca. 11%) among meteorites with orbits compared to their abundance among “normal” finds (ca. 4%), perhaps because, once landed on the surface, they decay quickly and are thus less likely to be found without the “prompt” provided by the fireball observation. /m4

New paper out: Cavezzo, an anomalous L-chondrite

A new paper by Gardiol et al. in MNRAS (available online) summarizes the results from the initial investigation of the Cavezzo chondrite, which fell in Italy on the evening of January 1st, 2020. The meteorite, of which two fragments have been found, is an anomalous L5 chondrite, the 9th L-chondrite out of 34 meteorites with orbits. The semi-major axis and eccentricity of its parent meteoroid plot along the characteristic trend, and as is often observed, the perihelion is just inside Earth’s orbit, while the aphelion is in the asteroid belt. /m4

New paper out: Dishchii’bikoh in MAPS

A new meteorite with an orbit has been published in Meteoritics & Planetary Science (MAPS): Dishchii’bikoh. It is a rare LL7 chondrite which fell near the city of Cibecue in Arizona / USA, and takes its name as pronounced in the language of the local White Mountain Apache tribe. Several fragments of almost 80 g total mass were recovered using the weather radar footprint of the fall. The orbit of the meteorite is remarkable for being relatively short (1.13 AU semi-major axis) and steeply inclined (ca. 21° to the ecliptic). Radionuclides suggest it was a relatively large meteoroid, at R = 60-100 cm. The cosmic-ray exposure age is quite typical for an ordinary chondrite, at 11 Ma. It seems likely the meteorite derived from the Flora family of asteroids in the inner asteroid belt, similar to other recent LL chondrite falls, like Stubenberg (2016) and Chelyabinsk (2013).

Full disclosure: I am a co-author on the paper. /m4

New papers out: Žďár nad Sázavou in MAPS and Porangaba in Icarus

Spurný et al. report in a new paper in MAPS on the fireball trajectory, orbit and meteorite recovery of the Žďár nad Sázavou (L3.9) meteorite, which fell in the Czech Republic on December 9th, 2014. This is the first unequilibrated ordinary chondrite with an orbit. The orbit has been in the database since 2016 because it was published in a MetSoc (Berlin) abstract by Spurný et al., 2016, now superseded by the peer-reviewed paper. The changes in the orbital parameters given in the paper, relative to the ones given in the abstract, are marginal, but I updated the list nevertheless.

Ferus et al. report in a new paper in Icarus on the trajectory, orbit and meteorite recovery of the Porangaba (L4) meteorite, which fell in Brazil just one month after the fall of Žďár nad Sázavou, on January 9th, 2015. Using two pictures of the dust trail, as well as some security camera footage allowed the authors to derive a set of orbital parameters, albeit with a comparatively large uncertainty. But since there is a closed orbital solution (unlike, e.g., to the somewhat similar case of the 1995 St. Robert meteorite), I have added the meteorite to the database. An interesting detail: the addition of Porangaba makes 2015 the first year from which (at least) four meteorite falls with orbits are known. Compare this with the fact that it took 33 years for the first four orbits…

I have updated the fall statistics and orbit plots, which now include the most recent falls including Porangaba. /m4