The Winchcombe strewn field
The first meteorite fall recovered in Britain for 30 years, found on a driveway and in a sheep field thanks to doorbell cameras and careful modelling.
Key facts
- Fell
- 28 February 2021, 9.54 in the evening
- Where
- Winchcombe, Gloucestershire, England
- Recovered
- about 0.6 kilograms
- Field
- a narrow ellipse a few kilometres long around the town
- Type
- Carbonaceous chondrite, CM2
The fall
A fireball crossed southern England for about six seconds and was filmed by dedicated meteor cameras and many doorbell cameras. Within hours, meteor scientists working together as the UK Fireball Alliance had calculated its path and its likely landing area near Winchcombe.
The ellipse
The modelled strewn field was a narrow ellipse a few kilometres long, crossing the town and surrounding farmland. Its position was worked out from the camera footage together with wind data for the evening of the fall.
Where the big and small pieces landed
A family in Winchcombe found about 300 grams of crumbly black fragments and powder spread across their driveway the next morning. Six days later a volunteer searcher, walking in a line with others across farmland with the landowner's permission, found a stone of about 150 grams sitting in a small pit in a sheep field. In all, about 600 grams were recovered.
The law
Britain has no law written for meteorites, and landowners are generally regarded as having the strongest claim. Winchcombe's searchers worked only with permission, and the stones went to the Natural History Museum in London for study.
Related pages
Glossary: Strewn field, Strewn field map, Fusion crust, Meteorite ownership