Meteorite fragments recovered in Germany after fireball seen over northwestern Europe.

More than 3000 witnesses in Belgium, France, Germany, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands have reported observing a bright fireball meteor at about 6.55 pm local time (about 5.55 pm GMT) on Sunday 8 March 2026, with some witnesses also reporting a sonic boom. The meteor is described as having moved from southwest to northeast for about six seconds before exploding in a fireball over the German state of Rhineland-Palatinate. A fireball is defined as a meteor (shooting star) brighter than the planet Venus. 

A very bright fireball moving from the southwest to the northeast was observed by many people in Belgium, France, Germany, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands. Bernd Klemt/AllSky7 fireball network/European Space Agency.

Objects of this size probably enter the Earth's atmosphere several times a year, though unless they do so over populated areas they are unlikely to be noticed. They are officially described as fireballs if they produce a light brighter than the planet Venus. The brightness of a meteor is caused by friction with the Earth's atmosphere, which is typically far greater than that caused by simple falling, due to the initial trajectory of the object. Such objects typically eventually explode in an airburst called by the friction, causing them to vanish as a luminous object. However, this is not the end of the story as such explosions result in the production of a number of smaller objects, which fall to the ground under the influence of gravity (which does not cause the luminescence associated with friction-induced heating).

These 'dark objects' do not continue along the path of the original bolide, but neither do they fall directly to the ground, but rather follow a course determined by the atmospheric currents (winds) through which the objects pass. Scientists are able to calculate potential trajectories for hypothetical dark objects derived from meteors using data from weather monitoring services.

Shortly after the meteor was sighted, two residents of a flat in the German city of Koblenz reported an impact which had caused a football-sized hole in their roof, as well as damage to a tiled floor in the room underneath. A search of the flat yielded eleven fragments of rock with masses of between 6 and 161 g. A number of smaller fragments were subsequently found in a neighbouring courtyard by professional meteorite-hunters and sold. Police in Koblenz have subsequently issued a warning to other meteorite-hunters in the area to respect private property, and not to collect suspected fragments from areas which they have not been given permission to enter.

The largest of the meteorite fragments recovered from a home in Koblenz, Germany, weighing 161 g. SWR.

The meteorite fragments have a pale interior and a near-black crust, making it likely that they are a type of stoney meteorite called a HED (howardite–eucrite–diogenite) achondrite breccia. These meteorites resemble terrestrial igneous rocks, and are therefore presumed to have come from a body large enough for magma differentiation and igneous processing to have occurred. HED meteorites comprise about 5% of all meteorites recovered on Earth, and about 60% of achondritic meteorites (meteorites which do not contain chondrules, spherules of glassy material thought to have formed from molten droplets in space before being incorporated into larger bodies).

Fragments of probable HED meteorite recovered from a flat in Koblenz, Germany. SWR.

While HED meteorites vary somewhat in composition, all are thought to derive from the surface of the Asteroid 4 Vesta. Studies of these meteorites have produced crystallisation ages of between 4.43 and 4.55 billion years, and all show signs of having formed in an environment where igneous differentiation has occurred. These meteorites are thought to have been dislodged from the surface of their parent body by ancient impacts.

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Ceres comes to opposition.

Dwarf Planet 1 Ceres will reach opposition (the point at which it is directly opposite the Sun when observed from the Earth) at 1.12 pm GMT on Thursday 2 October 2025, when it will also be at the closest point on its orbit to the Earth, at a distance of 1.96 AU (i.e. 1.96 times as far from the Earth as the Sun, or about 239 361 000 km), and be completely illuminated by the Sun. While it is not obvious to the naked eye observer, asteroids have phases just like those of the Moon; being further from the Sun than the Earth, 1 Ceres is 'full' when directly opposite the Sun. As 1 Ceres is only about 939.4 km in diameter, it will not be visible to the naked eye, but with a maximum Apparent Magnitude (luminosity) of 7.6 at opposition, it should be visible in the Constellation of Cetus to viewers equipped with a good pair of binoculars or small telescope, with the best visibility being at about midnight local time from anywhere on Earth.

The calculated orbit and position of 1 Ceres at 1.00 pm GMT on Thursday 2 October 2025.  JPL Small Body Database. 

Because Ceres is further from the Sun than the Earth, its orbital period is much longer than ours, with the Dwarf Planet completing one obit every 1683 days (4.65 years), on an eccentric orbit tilted at 10.6° to the plane of the Solar System. The orbit of Ceres places it within the inner part of the Main Asteroid Belt, but due to its large size, with a diameter of 939.4 km, it is considered to be a Dwarf Planet rather than an asteroid.

High resolution image of Ceres made on 20 September 2020, by the Dawn Space Probe. Wikimedia Commons/NASA/JPL/Caltech.

Ceres was discovered on 1 January 1801 by Giuseppe Piazzi, a Catholic priest at the Academy of Palermo, Sicily. It was the first body to be discovered in the Main Asteroid Belt, and at the time when it was discovered an international search was underway for a presumed 'missing planet' between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter (although Piazzi was studying stars when he first observed Ceres, and initially presumed he had found a new comet). Ceres was for a long time considered to be the largest asteroid in the Solar System, but in 2006 was re-classified as a Dwarf Planet, as part of a revision of the classification of Solar System bodies driven by the discovery of a growing number of bodies in the Outer Solar System which are too large to be considered asteroids or comets yet to small to be considered to be planets. 

Of the ten bodies currently classified as Dwarf Planets, only Ceres is located within the Main Asteroid Belt, with five lying in the Kuiper Belt (Orcus, Pluto, Salacea, Haumea, Quaoar, and Makemake), two lie within the Scattered Disk (Gonggong and Eris), and one within the Detached Region on the outer fringe of the Solar System (Sedna).

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Asteroid 4 Vesta comes to opposition.

Asteroid 4 Vesta will reach opposition (the point at which it is directly opposite the Sun when observed from the Earth) at 9.34 pm GMT on Thursday 22 December 2023, when it will also be at the closest point on its orbit to the Earth, 1.58 AU (i.e. 1.58 times as far from the Earth as the Sun, or about 236 813 000 km), and be completely illuminated by the Sun. While it is not obvious to the naked eye observer, asteroids have phases just like those of the Moon; being further from the Sun than the Earth, 4 Vesta is 'full' when directly opposite the Sun. As 4 Vesta is only about 525 km in diameter, it will not be visible to the naked eye, but with a maximum Apparent Magnitude (luminosity) of 6.4 at opposition, it should be visible in the Constellation of |Orion to viewers equipped with a good pair of binoculars or small telescope.

Asteroid 4 Vesta imaged by the Dawn space probe on 24 July 2011, from a distance of 5200 km. Björn Jónsson/NASA/JPL/MPS/DLR/IDA/Wikimedia Commons.

Asteroid 4 Vesta was discovered on 29 March 1807 by the German astronomer Heinrich Wilhelm Matthias Olbers, making it the fourth asteroid discovered, and the second by Olbers (who had discovered 2 Pallas on 28 March 1802). The asteroid was named Vesta in honour of the Roman goddess of the hearth. 4 Vesta is currently considered to be the second largest body in the Main Asteroid Belt, although uncertainty about the size of Asteroid 2 Pallas, means this is not completely certain.

The orbit and position of 4 Vesta and the planets of the Inner Solar System on 21 December 2023.  JPL Small Body Database. 

4 Vesta has a 1326 day (3.63 year) orbital period and an eccentric orbit tilted at an angle of 7.14° to the plane of the Solar System, which takes it from 2.15 AU from the Sun (i.e. 215% of the average distance at which the Earth orbits the Sun) to 2.57 AU from the Sun (i.e. 257% of the average distance at which the Earth orbits the Sun). As an asteroid that never comes within 1.666 AU of the Sun and has an average orbital distance less than 3.2 AU from the Sun, 4 Vesta is classed as a Main Belt Asteroid. 

Artist's concept of the Dawn space probe approaching 4 Vesta. NASA/JPL/CalTech.

The Dawn space probe orbited 4 Vesta from 16 July 2011 until 5 September 2012 (when it left to move on to Asteroid 1 Ceres). During this time it built up a detailed map of the surface of 4 Vesta, which revealed a northern surface covered with craters; apparently much older than the southern surface, suggesting that the asteroid was once a planetesimal on its way to growing into a planet.

High-resolution geological map of Vesta derived from Dawn spacecraft data. Brown colours represent the oldest, most heavily cratered surface. Purple colours in the north and light blue represent terrains modified by the Veneneia and Rheasilvia impacts, respectively. Light purples and dark blue colours below the equator represent the interior of the Rheasilvia and Veneneia basins. Greens and yellows represent relatively young landslides or other downhill movement and crater impact materials, respectively. NASA/JPL/CalTech/JSU.

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NASA's Lucy spacecraft discovers asteroid 152830 Dinkinesh has a binary moon.

NASA's Lucy spacecraft flew past asteroid 152830 Dinkinesh on Wednesday 1 November 2023, discovering that the asteroid had a binary moon in the process. The Lucy spacecraft, launched from Cape Canaveral on 16 October 2021, was named after the Hominin fossil Lucy, which in turn was named after the Beetles song, Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds; the spacecraft carries a disc made of lab-grown diamonds for its L'TES (Lucy’s Thermal Emission Spectrometer) instrument. Lucy's primary mission is to explore Jupiter's Trojan Asteroids (asteroids permanently located in Jupiter's L₄ and L₅ Lagrange points. The trajectory of the probe was adjusted to make a flyby of 152830 Dinkinesh in January 2023, primarily as a way of testing its instruments on a suitable object.

An artist's concept depicting the Lucy spacecraft flying past the Trojan asteroid (617) Patroclus and its binary companion Menoetius. NASA/Southwest Research Institute/Wikimedia Commons.

The spacecraft first spotted the asteroid orbiting the 790 m asteroid at 4.55 pm GMT on 1 November 2023, when it was 430 km from the asteroid, passing it at a speed of 16 000 km per hour. At this time it was thought the second body was a single object roughly 220 m in diameter. However, the spacecraft took a second image looking back at the asteroid at 5.00 pm, revealing the satellite body to be a binary, made up of two similar sized objects in contact with one-another. 

A diagram showing the trajectory of the NASA Lucy spacecraft (red) during its flyby of the asteroid 152830 Dinkinesh and its satellite. NASA/Goddard Institute for Space Studies/Southwest Research Institute/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/National Optical-Infrared Astronomy Research Laboratory.

While it was once thought that small asteroids lacked sufficient gravitational pull to have satellites, an increasing number have been shown to do so in recent years, and this is now thought to be quite common. Similarly, contact binaries, not predicted until they were discovered, are now fairly frequently observed. This is, however, the first time a moon of a small asteroid has been found to be a contact binary.

This image shows the asteroid Dinkinesh and its satellite as seen by the Lucy Long-Range Reconnaissance Imager  as NASA’s Lucy Spacecraft departed the system. NASA/Goddard Institute for Space Studies/Southwest Research Institute/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory.

Asteroid 152830 Dinkinesh was discovered by the Lincoln Near-Earth Asteroid Research Survey in Socorro, New Mexico on 4 November 1999. It was originally given the designation 1999 VD57, indicating that it was the 1429th object (asteroid D57 - in numbering asteroids the letters A-Z, excluding I, are assigned numbers from 1 to 25, with a number added to the end each time the alphabet is ended, so that A = 1, A1 = 26, A2 = 51, etc., which means that D57 = (25 x 57) + 4 = 1429) discovered in the first half of November 1999 (period 1999 V - the year being split into 24 half-months represented by the letters A-Y, with I being excluded). The longer designation 152830 implies that it was the 152 830th asteroid ever discovered, (these numbers are not assigned immediately, to prevent false sightings and repeat sightings of the same body being numbered). The name 'Dinkinesh' derives from 'Dink’inesh', which is the name given to the Lucy fossil in Amharic (the official language of Ethiopia, where the fossil was discovered), and means 'you are wonderful'. The name was chosen after it was decided that the asteroid would be a target for the Lucy spacecraft, and approved by the  International Astronomical Union's Working Group for Small Bodies Nomenclature on 6 February 2023.

The orbit and current position of asteroid 152830 Dinkinesh. JPL Small Body Database.

152830 Dinkinesh is calculated to have a 1185 day (3.24 year) orbital period, with an elliptical orbit tilted at an angle of 2.09° to the plain of the Solar System which takes in to 1.94 AU from the Sun (194% of the distance at which the Earth orbits the Sun, and some way the orbit of Mars) and out to 2.44 AU (2.44 times the distance at which the Earth orbits the Sun). It is therefore classed as a Main Belt Asteroid.

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Dwarf Planet 1 Ceres comes to opposition.

Dwarf Planet 1 Ceres will reach opposition (the point at which it is directly opposite the Sun when observed from the Earth) at 5.37 pm GMT on Tuesday 21 March 2023, when it will also be at the closest point on its orbit to the Earth, 1.60 AU (i.e. 1.6 times as far from the Earth as the Sun, or about 239 207 000 km), and be completely illuminated by the Sun. While it is not obvious to the naked eye observer, asteroids have phases just like those of the Moon; being further from the Sun than the Earth, 1 Ceres is 'full' when directly opposite the Sun. As 1 Ceres is only about 939.4 km in diameter, it will not be visible to the naked eye, but with a maximum Apparent Magnitude (luminosity) of 6.9 at opposition, it should be visible in the Constellation of Coma Berenices to viewers equipped with a good pair of binoculars or small telescope, with the best visibility being at about 1.20 am local time from anywhere on Earth.

The calculated orbit and position of 1 Ceres at 6.00 pm GMT on Tuesday 21 March 2023.  JPL Small Body Database. 

Because Ceres is further from the Sun than the Earth, its orbital period is much longer than ours, with the Dwarf Planet completing one obit every 1683 days (4.65 years), on an eccentric orbit tilted at 10.6° to the plane of the Solar System. The orbit of Ceres places it within the inner part of the Main Asteroid Belt, but due to its large size, with a diameter of 939.4 km, it is considered to be a Dwarf Planet rather than an asteroid.

High resolution image of Ceres made on 20 September 2020, by the Dawn Space Probe. Wikimedia Commons/NASA/JPL/Caltech.

Ceres was discovered on 1 January 1801 by Giuseppe Piazzi, a Catholic priest at the Academy of Palermo, Sicily. It was the first body to be discovered in the Main Asteroid Belt, and at the time when it was discovered an international search was underway for a presumed 'missing planet' between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter (although Piazzi was studying stars when he first observed Ceres, and initially presumed he had found a new comet). Ceres was for a long time considered to be the largest asteroid in the Solar System, but in 2006 was re-classified as a Dwarf Planet, as part of a revision of the classification of Solar System bodies driven by the discovery of a growing number of bodies in the Outer Solar System which are too large to be considered asteroids or comets yet to small to be considered to be planets. Of the nine bodies currently classified as Dwarf Planets, only Ceres is located within the Main Asteroid Belt, with five lying in the Kuiper Belt (Orcus, Pluto, Haumea, Quaoar, and Makemake), two lie within the Scattered Disk (Gonggong and Eris), and one within the Detached Region on the outer fringe of the Solar System (Sedna).

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Asteroid 3 Juno comes to opposition.

Asteroid 3 Juno will reach opposition (the point at which it is directly opposite the Sun when observed from the Earth) at 7.10 pm GMT on Wednesday 7 September 2022, when it will also be at the closest point on its orbit to the Earth, 1.31 AU (i.e. 31 times as far from the Earth as the Sun, or about 195 422 000 km), and be completely illuminated by the Sun. While it is not obvious to the naked eye observer, asteroids have phases just like those of the Moon; being further from the Sun than the Earth, 3 Juno is 'full' when directly opposite the Sun. As 3 Juno is only about 247 km in diameter, it will not be visible to the naked eye, but with a maximum Apparent Magnitude (luminosity) of 7.8 at opposition, it should be visible in the Constellation of Aquarius to viewers equipped with a good pair of binoculars or small telescope, with the best visibility being at about midnight from anywhere on Earth.

The calculated orbit and position of 3 Juno on 7 September 2022. In The Sky.

Asteroid 3 Juno was discovered on 1 September 1804 by German astronomer Karl Harding, making it the third asteroid ever discovered. It was named Juno in honour of the Roman goddess Juno, wife of Jupiter. Juno is thought to be one of the 20 largest bodies in the Main Asteroid Belt, containing about 1% of all the mass in the Asteroid Belt, and is one of the two largest stony (S-type) asteroids, along with Asteroid 15 Eunomia.

3 Juno has a 1594 day (4.36 year) orbital period and an eccentric orbit tilted at an angle of 13.0° to the plane of the Solar System, which takes it from 1.98 AU from the Sun (i.e. 198% of the average distance at which the Earth orbits the Sun) to 3.36 AU from the Sun (i.e. 336% of the average distance at which the Earth orbits the Sun). As an asteroid that never comes within 1.666 AU of the Sun and has an average orbital distance less than 3.2 AU from the Sun, 3 Juno is classed as a Main Belt Asteroid. 

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