Krisztián Sárneczky
The Hungarian astronomer who discovered three small asteroids hours before they struck the Earth, including one that fell near Berlin in 2024.
Key facts
- Nationality
- Hungarian
- Field
- Astronomer
Krisztián Sárneczky is an astronomer at the Konkoly Observatory in Budapest who searches for asteroids from the Piszkéstető mountain station in northern Hungary. He has discovered hundreds of asteroids.
He is best known for a rare achievement: finding asteroids just before they hit the Earth. Only a handful of such objects have ever been spotted in advance, and Sárneczky has discovered three of them. The first, 2022 EB5, exploded over the Norwegian Sea north of Iceland in March 2022, about two hours after he found it. The second, 2023 CX1, fell over Normandy in northern France in February 2023, and meteorites from it were recovered near the village of Saint-Pierre-le-Viger.
The third, 2024 BX1, was discovered on 20 January 2024, about three hours before it struck. It broke up over Brandenburg, west of Berlin, early on 21 January. Within days, searchers found pieces near the village of Ribbeck. They turned out to be aubrites, rare pale meteorites made largely of the mineral enstatite.
Each successful prediction tests the whole chain of planetary defence: spotting a faint moving point, calculating its orbit, warning others in time and finding the fragments where they were expected to fall.
On the timeline
- 21 January 20242024 BX1 falls near Berlin