Otterskirchen meteorite fall (1969)
| Otterskirchen meteorite fall (1969) | |
|---|---|
| place | Otterskirchen |
| Fall time | April 10, 1969, around 10:40 PM |
| authenticity | for sure |
On April 10, 1969 , a very slow fireball lit up over Otterskirchen , which went out between Passau and Vilshofen . It was seen by numerous eyewitnesses and recorded by five cameras of the European Fireball Network.
Case report from the People's Observatory in Munich
Numerous eyewitnesses observed an unknown, bright and large apparition over Passau. The following eyewitness report about the "unknown fireball object" was faxed to the People's Observatory in Munich:
"On the evening of April 10th Around 10:40 p.m. I was on the motorway near Strengberg in the direction of Salzburg. It was a particularly clear night. Suddenly an extraordinarily bright and large phenomenon appeared, which ran through the field of vision of the windshield from left to right - for example SW-NE. The object can be described as an elongated, incandescent glowing body, the head end of which appeared to be almost the diameter of the moon. The length was estimated to be five to six times as long. At the end of the incandescent part an even longer, dark, fiery red, vehemently ejected tail could be seen, which only loosened up at the end. At the end of the trajectory that was visible for approximately 4-5 seconds, the incandescent part seemed to explode like a rocket. A detonation was not audible in the closed car. "
Reconstruction of the flight path
Even if the cameras of the fireball network could not record the meteorite properly, the path and the impact area of the meteoroid could be determined: According to the calculations, a final mass of about 5–10 kilograms reached the ground and hit near the town of Otterskirchen in Lower Bavaria . The deceleration behavior and the course of the light curve suggested that it was a stone meteorite of the carbonic chondrite type from the asteroid belt . This type of meteoroid has a strong tendency to fragment. For this reason, a shower of several small fragments is more likely than the case of a single body.
Thanks to the records of the fireball network, one can be very sure that fragments have reached the earth. The alleged stray field is located in the northwest of the city of Passau , between the villages of Otterskirchen , Aicha vorm Wald , Neukirchen vorm Wald and Tiefenbach .
Unsuccessful search despite reward
Despite the coordination of the search by experts from the Max Planck Institute and a reward of 500 DM no fragment of the meteorite has been found to date. Although some reports were received from citizens, they all turned out to be false.
literature
- Bavarian State Office for the Environment : Out of this world. Bavaria's meteorite. Self-published, Augsburg 2012, ISBN 978-3-936385-92-2 .