Pavel Spurný
The Czech fireball expert whose camera networks traced the Neuschwanstein meteorite and many other falls to the ground.
Key facts
- Nationality
- Czech
- Field
- Astronomer
Pavel Spurný works at the Astronomical Institute at Ondřejov in the Czech Republic, where Zdeněk Ceplecha first traced a meteorite's orbit in 1959. He has led the European Fireball Network, whose cameras watch the skies over central Europe every night.
On 6 April 2002 the network recorded a bright fireball over southern Germany. Spurný and his colleagues calculated where it should have dropped meteorites. Three were found, the first in July 2002, in Bavaria and Austria, near the famous castle of Neuschwanstein. Remarkably, its orbit matched that of the Příbram meteorite of 1959, and it was also a different type, an enstatite chondrite.
Spurný has improved the cameras of the network, adding digital cameras and radiometers that record the brightness of a fireball thousands of times a second. He has also worked on the analysis of the Benešov fall of 1991, found years later, and on fireballs recorded around the world.
His work shows how precise measurements of light and time can follow a meteoroid from its orbit around the Sun to the spot on the ground where it comes to rest.
On the timeline
- 6 April 2002Neuschwanstein: a fall traced by cameras