Mestanza, Spain
1 min read
Mestanza 3D Trajectory
Mestanza, Spain – January 14, 2022, 10:27 PM local time, a meteor fireball was detected by multiple cameras, belonging to the Southwestern Europe Meteor Network (SWEMN). The fireball had a near vertical trajectory, over the Ciudad Real region of south central Spain, and there was visible fragmentation in the video.
This was a relatively small event, but it is likely that some fragments reached the ground. Refer to the sections below for details and maps, which you can download to Google Earth.
| Entry Date/Time: | 2022-01-14 21:27:00 UTC |
| End Location: | 60km SSW of Ciudad Real, Spain |
| Endpoint Coordinates: | 38.4993°N, 4.1540°W |
| Reference Altitude: | 23 km above sea level |
| Energy / Mass Estimate: | < 10 tonne TNT / <400kg |
| Reference Speed: | 13.3 km/s |
| Bearing: | 88.4° E |
| Slope: | 7.8° from vertical |
| Estimated Strewn Mass: | < 25 kg |
| Classification: | unknown |
| Event Links: | SWEMN Fireball Page |
Video and News
The video below was posted to YouTube, showing views of the event and the trajectory, from the principal investigator of the SMART project: Dr. Jose M. Madiedo, from the Institute of Astrophysics of Andalusia (IAA-CSIC).
Search Efforts
This event is definitely worth hunting, because of the slow speed and visible fragmentation in the video. You have the best chance of finding fragments in the 10 to 100 gram range.
If you would like to search for for meteorites from this or future events in this region, please join the Discord or Facebook group.
Join the Strewnify Europe Facebook Group
StrewnLAB Search Area
The meteor trajectory has been run through the StrewnLAB software to predict a search area, which matches the Doppler data for lighter fragements. Since there are two likely Doppler signatures for this event, we have also used these to predict the critical search area. Please download and review the Google Earth files below for detailed maps of the search area. The Strewnify team thanks Vicente Cayuelas Mollá for helping in the data analysis for this event.
Weather Data
The weather data below is sourced from weather balloons, and publicly 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
