The Košice strewn field
A night-time fall recorded by security cameras in Hungary, whose strewn field became a model of careful mapping.
Key facts
- Fell
- 28 February 2010, just before midnight
- Where
- near Košice, eastern Slovakia
- Recovered
- about 11 kilograms in more than 200 fragments
- Field
- a mapped field a few kilometres long in woodland and fields
- Type
- Ordinary chondrite, H5
The fall
Few people saw the fireball, but security cameras in neighbouring Hungary recorded its light. Scientists used the footage to reconstruct its path, its break-up points and its orbit, which led back to the asteroid belt.
The ellipse
Teams led by Comenius University in Bratislava searched the predicted area over several expeditions and recorded the position of every fragment, producing one of the most detailed strewn-field maps of any fall.
Where the big and small pieces landed
More than 200 fragments weighing about 11 kilograms were found. Small fragments lay at one end and larger ones, a few of more than a kilogram, further along the path, exactly as models of mass sorting predict.
The law
We know of no Slovak law written for meteorites. The searches were organised by scientists with landowners' cooperation.
Related pages
Glossary: Strewn field, Strewn field map, Fusion crust, Meteorite ownership