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Meteorite fall
Falling of meteors From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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A meteorite fall, also called an observed fall, is a meteorite collected after its fall from outer space, that was observed by people or automated devices. Any other meteorite is called a "find".[1][2] As of December 2025[update], the Meteoritical Bulletin Database listed 1,269 observed falls of approved meteorites, most of which have specimens in modern collections.[3]
Significance
Observed meteorite falls are important for several reasons: Material from observed falls has not been subjected to terrestrial weathering, making the find a better candidate for scientific study. Historically, observed falls were the most compelling evidence supporting the extraterrestrial origin of meteorites.[4] Furthermore, observed fall discoveries are a better representative sample of the types of meteorites which fall to Earth. For example, iron meteorites take much longer to weather and are easier to identify as unusual objects, as compared to other types. This may explain the increased proportion of iron meteorites among finds (6.7%), over that among observed falls (4.4%).[3] There is also detailed statistics on falls such as based on meteorite classification.
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Automated Devices
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In April 1959 the metorite Příbram was the first meteorite whose trajectory was tracked by multiple cameras recording the associated fireball. The Ondřejov Observatory in the Czech Republic captured photos of the fireball using eleven widely spaced cameras. With the help of this stereo recording (through triangulation), Přibram's trajectory could be reconstructed quite accurately, aiding its recovery and also - for the very first time - enabling scientists to trace its pre-impact orbit back to the asteroid belt.
Eleven years later, the fireball from the Lost City meteorite, was recorded with four cameras from the Prairie Meteorite Network operated by the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, when it fell in Cherokee County Oklahoma, in January 1970.[5] This was the first time a meteorite was recovered solely on the basis of photographic measurements. In 1977 the meteorite of Innisfree was discovered using photographs taken by the Meteorite Observation and Recovery Program of the National Research Council of Canada.[6][7] The fall of Benešov was recorded in 1991, however the meteorite was only recovered in 2011 after the strewnfield was recalculated and the search was concentrated on small fragments.[8]
The meteorite of Ischgl had been found in Austria in 1976 and was kept at home by the finder without undergoing any scientific examination until 2008, when it was classified as a meteorite. Upon review of the archived fireballs events photographed by the German fireball camera network, it could be determined, in a study published in 2024, that in November 1970 a fireball event observed by 10 different stations was connected to the fall of the later discovered meteorite.[9]
Over the last decades fireball networks consisting of dedicated arrays of cameras were put in operation in several countries. As more automated cameras monitor the night sky and track fireballs, the chances of locating meteorites have increased. Statistics for observed falls by decade are listed in the table in this section. It took more than 30 years for the falls of the first 4 meteorites to be recorded by automated devices, the same amount of falls with documented trajectories as in the single year of 2015.
For the period since 2020 the number of meteorite falls reported globally each year has increased to on avererage more than 10 per year, up from about 6 a year in the 1990ies. As of December 2025 there are 75 instrumentally observed recovered meteorites, for which also a pre-impact orbit could be determined.[10][11][12][13]
Today, there are several networks of whole sky cameras recording space rock from different directions, thus making it easier to calculate the impact sites of meteorites and increasing the probability of actually finding material after a meteor has been observed.
Among the camera networks are:
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Video Cameras
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Accidental random fireball records documented by video have increased over the past decades and social media now distributes videos so broadly that a much larger share of falls is being captured and documented.[14] The first ever meteor to be filmed by a camera was the Great Daylight Fireball which blazed over the Rocky Mountains in 1972 - however this earth grazer supposedly left earth’s atmosphere again, without meteorites impacting the ground.
The first meteorite fall to be documented by video cameras by coincidence was Peekskill meteorite in 1992.[15] The bright fireball visible for more than 40 seconds was recorded by 15 chance eyewitnesses’ videocameras from different locations. Peekskill back then was only the fourth meteorite whose prior orbit could be calculated based on the reconstructed trajectory of the fall. The orbits for the previous falls of Přibram (1959), Lost City meteorite (1970) and Innisfree (1977) had been determined based on photographs. Peekskill, however, was the first fall documented by motion-picture footage.
Video cameras have since become widespread with the rise of surveillance or traffic cameras, ski-resort webcams, dashboard and doorbell cameras and smart phones, which have all been used to capture fireballs in connection with recovered meteorites. Among the most spectacular falls observed by numerous cameras is the Chelyabinsk meteor from February 2013.[16]
The fall of the meteorite in Novo Mesto, Slovenia, in February 2020 was captured by dashcams, security cameras and even a camera mounted on a cyclist’s helmet. The footage was used by astronomers to triangulate the meteorite’s trajectory.[17][18][19]
The fall of the Charlottetown meteorite in 2024 was the first case, where the actual moment of the impact on the ground was recorded with video including audio.[20] The sound of the meteorite shattering upon impact has been described as similar to the sound of breaking ice.[21]
Astronomical observations before impact
In October 2008 the observation of asteroid 2008 TC3 turned into the first meteorite, whose impact had been predicted. The astroid on a collision course with earth had been discovered by a telescope 20 hours before its entry into the atmosphere. The fall of the meteorite could be observed by pilots of a passenger plane from a distance of 1,400 km and a webcam recording in Egypt from a distance of 725 km as well as several witnesses on the ground near the “train station number six” (Arabic: al-Maḥaṭṭa Sitta) in the Nubian Desert in Sudan, who observed a meteor and heard explosion sounds minutes later. Months later an expedition searching for the metorite turned up 10.5 kilograms of rock in some 600 fragments.
Since the observed fall of the Almahata Sitta meteorite, 10 more asteroids have been added to the list of predicted asteroid impacts on Earth which impacted earth after discovery and orbit calculation that predicted the impact in advance.
Among them are 3 more observed falls, where fragments of the meteorites could be recovered:
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List of meteorite falls
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Oldest falls
The German physicist Ernst Chladni, sometimes considered as the father of meteoritics,[25] was the first to publish in modern Western thought (in 1794) the then audacious idea that meteorites are rocks from space.[26] There were already several documented cases, one of the earliest was the Aegospotami meteorite of 467 BC and which became a landmark for 500 years, of which Diogenes of Apollonia said:[27]
"With the visible stars revolve stones which are invisible, and for that reason nameless. They often fall on the ground and are extinguished, like the stone star that came down on fire at Aegospotami."
showing that the Greeks had a much earlier idea that meteorites are rocks from space.
The table below lists all 40 acknowledged meteorite falls, observed before April 1794. However, unlike the Ensisheim meteorite, not all are as well-documented.
Largest falls
While most confirmed falls involve masses between less than one kg to several kg, some reach 100 kg or more. A few have fragments that total even more than one metric ton. The six largest falls are listed below and five (except the 2013 Chelyabinsk meteorite) occurred during the 20th century. Presumably, events of such magnitude may happen a few times per century (often in remote areas) and have typically gone unreported.
For comparison, the largest finds (not corresponding to an observed fall) are the 60-ton Hoba meteorite, a 30.8-ton fragment (Gancedo) and a 28.8-ton fragment (El Chaco) of the Campo del Cielo, and a 30.9-ton fragment (Ahnighito) of the Cape York meteorite.
Recent falls (since 1959)
As of December 2025, there have been 454 approved meteorites with observed falls found since the beginning of 1959. The year 1959 marks the beginning of the era of instrumentally observed meteorite falls, with the meteorite of Přibram being the first. Before that, meteorite falls could only be observed by human eyes (and ears).
Before 1959
This table lists all meteorites with observed falls since 1794 and before 1959. In April 1794 the German natural scientists Ernst Chladni published his book “On the Origin of the Pallas Iron and Other Similar Iron Masses, and on Some Associated Natural Phenomena”. This publication was a turning point in the understanding of meteorites because it argued – against the fashionable skepticism of the time – that the reported falls of stones and irons were real and that meteorites have their origin in cosmic space, linking them to bright fireballs.[214] It was a groundbreaking work in many respects for the further development of scientific views since the late 18th century. By reframing “stones from the sky” as a legitimate natural phenomenon worth investigating, it helped kick-start modern meteoritics and paved the way for later acceptance through systematic studies and well-documented falls. The publication happened a few weeks before the well observed and documented meteorite fall of Siena in Italy, and over the next decade scientific opinion swung rapidly - with the meteorite fall of L'Aigle in France in 1803 and the documentation of this event by Jean-Baptiste Biot. By 1804, most scholars accepted that meteorites are of extraterrestrial origin.[215]
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References
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