A bright fireball witnessed on august, 17, 2011 over the Iberian Peninsula

Abstract

The detailed study of bright fireball events is one of the aims of the SPanish Meteor Net- work (SPMN), as these allow us to collect very valu- able information on the origin of the relatively rare meteorite-dropping bolides. In this context, a very bright fireball (at least mag. -12) was observed over the Iberian Peninsula during the evening twilight of August 17, 2011. However, unfavourable weather conditions in most of the regions where our meteor observing stations were working did not allow us to record any video or image of this fireball. Fortunately, because of excellent weat her over Galicia and other areas in northwest Spain, the observation of this event was very favourable for numerous visual witnesses that could account for it. These were interviewed by a team belonging to the Ramón María Aller Astronomi- cal Observatory (OARMA). This made possible a reli- able reconstruction of the fireball trajectory in a sys- tematic way as made in previous events [see e.g. 3]. We present here the preliminar y analysis of this event. The data provided by the eyewitnesses reveal that, in fact, this could have been a meteorite-dropping fire- ball, although the meteorite would have landed on the Atlantic Ocean