Arpu Kuilpu: An H5 from the outer main belt
Abstract
On June 1, 2019, just before 7:30 p.m. local time, the Desert Fireball Network (DFN) detected a −9.3 magnitude fireball over South Australia near the Western Australia border. The event was observed by six fireball observatories, and lasted for 5 s. One station was nearly directly underneath the trajectory, greatly constraining the trajectory solution. This trajectory's backward numerical integrations indicate that the object originated from the outer main belt with a semimajor axis of 2.75 au. A light curve was also extracted and showed that the body experienced very little fragmentation during its atmospheric passage. A search campaign was conducted with several DFN team members and other volunteers. One 42 g fragment was recovered within the predicted fall area based on the dark flight model. Based on measurements of short-lived radionuclides, the fragment was confirmed to be a fresh fall. The meteorite, Arpu Kuilpu, has been classified as an H5 ordinary chondrite. This marks the fifth fall recovered in Australia by the DFN, and the smallest meteoroid (≃2 kg) to ever survive entry and be recovered as a meteorite.
- Publication:
-
Meteoritics and Planetary Science
- Pub Date:
- June 2022
- DOI:
- 10.1111/maps.13813
- arXiv:
- arXiv:2202.07185
- Bibcode:
- 2022M&PS...57.1146S
- Keywords:
-
- Astrophysics - Earth and Planetary Astrophysics;
- Physics - Geophysics
- E-Print:
- submitted to MAPS