Bhiwadi, India
3 min read
Bhiwadi, INDIA – February 11, 2020, 5:18 AM local time, U.S. Government sensors detected a large meteor fireball travelling ENE at 31.7 km/s, into a rural area 50 km outside the city of New Delhi. Total atmospheric impact energy was equivalent to 95 tonnes of TNT!
Being a morning event, the speed was on the high end, but it is still possible that fragments of the meteoroid survived the journey through the atmosphere. The meteor approached from the west, near Rewari, and burned out approximately 25 km altitude, above the city of Bhiwadi. There were also strong winds from the west at the time of the event, which would have blown any lighter meteorite fragments east, producing a unique circular search area. This could be good and bad for meteorite hunters, who may have a difficult time locating the strewn field, which could be quite small, but also quite dense inside the large search area shown below. Good luck and happy hunting!
| Date/Time: | 02/10/2020 23:48:17 UTC |
| Location: | 60km southwest of New Delhi, India |
| Reference Coordinates: | 28.2°N 76.7°E |
| Reference Altitude: | 41.7 km above sea level |
| Energy / Mass Estimate: | 0.095kt / 791kg |
| Reference Speed: | 31.7 km/s |
| Bearing: | 78.1° ENE |
| Slope: | 50° from vertical |
| Event Links: | CNEOS |
Video and News
There were some exaggerated claims in the news, that the meteorite created a 20-foot wide crater at a factory. This story is not true. The meteor was filmed from security cameras at a factory some distance away, in the city of Alwar, but the meteor was actually more than 70km away from that location and probably not large enough to create a crater of any size.
Search Efforts
Members of the Delhi Astronomy Club are actively searching for meteorites from this large meteor event. If you are interested in joining the search, please visit the Facebook group below, which will be used to coordinate public meteorite search efforts in the area:
The video above contains footage of the meteor from a factory in the city of Alwar. With help from a local astronomy enthusiast, Vishal Sharma, we were able to contact the owner of the factory in Alwar and obtain the exact location of the camera that captured the video. These measurements allowed us to calculate a more accurate endpoint of the meteor and narrowed the search area a bit.
StrewnLAB Search Area
A strewn field search area has been generated for this event, by the StrewnLAB algorithm. This map shows the most likely area to search for meteorites, in the yellow map squares. Please download the KMZ file below and load it into Google Earth.
Weather Data
The weather data below is sourced from weather balloons, and spublicly available via NOAA’s Integrated Global Radiosonde Archive (IGRA). This data is downloaded and post-processed by the StrewnLAB algorithm, to account for changing weather patterns and weather balloon drift. The plots have altitude on the y-axis, in kilometers above sea level. The wind speed below 10km has large effect on the drift of meteorites.
The author and founder of Strewnify.com, an automotive controls engineer, with a passion for physics.
Hancock, Michigan, USA | james.a.goodall@gmail.com | +1 586 709 5888
