[P-PS03] Small Solar System Bodies: New perspectives on the origin and evolution of the Solar System

[PPS03-P16] Trajectory Reconstruction and Analysis of the August 2025 Fireball Over Japan Utilizing Multi-Station Optical Data

*Yleana Evelyn Ceballos¹、Hany S. Elbehiri¹、Masa-yuki Yamamoto¹ (1.Kochi University of Technology)

キーワード：

meteor、fireball、optical、trajectory

On August 19^th, 2025, a fireball flew near southern Japan and was placed among the most energetic meteors in this area in recent years. To constrain meteoroid physical properties and improve impact hazard assessments, accurate reconstruction of a meteor’s trajectory is essential. Multi-station high-sensitivity video observations underwent astrometric calibration with SkyFit2, a feature of the Raspberry Pi Meteor Station (RMS) software suite, then combined using an open-source meteor-physics library, WesternMeteorPyLib (WMPL) which uses intersecting planes (IP), line-of-sight (LoS), and Monte Carlo trajectory estimation methods. The fireball entered the atmosphere with an apparent zenith angle of 32° with a duration of approximately 4 s. The extrapolated altitude for the reported time of peak brightness (14:08:48 UTC) was determined to be 26.1 kilometers (km) with a difference 1.4 km when compared to the altitude of 27.5 km estimated by NASA’s Center for Near-Earth Object Studies (CNEOS). The calculated endpoint of the flight path has coordinates (30.87°N, 131.94°E) at peak brightness. Comparing this endpoint with the estimate from CNEOS (30.9°N, 131.8°E) revealed a difference of 0.03° in latitude, 0.14° in longitude, and 0.12° in angular separation. The calculated velocity and reported CNEOS velocity were 19.2 kms-1 and 19.6 kms-1, respectively. Variances can be attributed to differing modeling assumptions and observational geometries. The root-mean-square-deviation (RMSD) of the angular residuals were used to validate trajectory precision. The RMSD for each station were 1.1 and 1.7 arcminutes (i.e., 0.02° and 0.03°) for Shikoku and Kyushu sites, respectively. This study demonstrates the efficacy of integrating multi-station video observations for the reconstruction and characterization of fireball trajectories.