0000000000134374
AUTHOR
François Colas
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 2020 January 4th. 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, re…
A Pluto-like radius and a high albedo for the dwarf planet Eris from an occultation
The dwarf planet Eris is a trans-Neptunian object with an orbital eccentricity of 0.44, an inclination of 44 degrees and a surface composition very similar to that of Pluto. It resides at present at 95.7 astronomical units (1ĝ€‰au is the Earth-Sun distance) from Earth, near its aphelion and more than three times farther than Pluto. Owing to this great distance, measuring its size or detecting a putative atmosphere is difficult. Here we report the observation of a multi-chord stellar occultation by Eris on 6 November 2010 ut. The event is consistent with a spherical shape for Eris, with radius 1,163±6 kilometres, density 2.52±0.05 grams per cm 3 and a high visible geometric albedo,. No nitro…
FRIPON: a worldwide network to track incoming meteoroids
Context. Until recently, camera networks designed for monitoring fireballs worldwide were not fully automated, implying that in case of a meteorite fall, the recovery campaign was rarely immediate. This was an important limiting factor as the most fragile - hence precious - meteorites must be recovered rapidly to avoid their alteration. Aims. The Fireball Recovery and InterPlanetary Observation Network (FRIPON) scientific project was designed to overcome this limitation. This network comprises a fully automated camera and radio network deployed over a significant fraction of western Europe and a small fraction of Canada. As of today, it consists of 150 cameras and 25 European radio receiver…
The 90-day oscillations of Jupiter’s Great Red Spot revisited
Abstract We have analyzed a large set of ground-based CCD images covering the period from 1993 to early 1999, to address the current status and behavior of the 90-day longitudinal oscillations of the Jovian Great Red Spot (GRS). The good temporal sampling of these data have been complemented with a small set of high resolution Hubble Space Telescope images. The average zonal velocity of the GRS from 1994 to 1998 was −3.8 ms−1 with extreme values of −2.4 and −4.2 ms−1 in 1993–1994 resulting from the interactions with nearby features. Our study confirms the existence of the longitudinal oscillations with a mean period of 89.8±0.15 days and an amplitude of 1.2±0.7°. The oscillations survived t…
The size, shape, density and ring of the dwarf planet Haumea from a stellar occultation
Ortiz, José Luis et. al.