New meteor camera at Széchenyi István Geophysical Observatory detects bright fireball

During the recent maximum of the Perseid meteor shower, several bright fireballs appeared over Hungary. One of these was recorded by the meteor camera HU0009 at the Széchenyi István Geophysical Observatory (SZIGO) on August 13, 2025 at 23:18:20 UT (local time August 14, 2025 01:18:20). The source of the Perseid meteor shower is the debris cloud from the Swift-Tuttle comet, which the Earth passes through during July-August. The shower reaches its spectacular maximum on August 12/13, when up to 100 meteors appear per hour. Spectacular, explosive fireballs are common at this time, one of which is shown in the video published here.

In this June, the Space Research-Space Technology research group of our Institute put four new meteor cameras (HU0006, HU0007, HU0008, HU0009) into operation. The cameras are connected to the international Global Meteor Network, which is coordinated by the meteor research group of the University of Western Ontario in Canada. With the new cameras, we monitor meteor activity in the upper atmosphere above Sopron at an altitude of 50 – 120 km on a daily basis. Meteor detections in the optical range are compared with observations made with ionospheric radar, from which we can obtain a lot of important information about the transient processes taking place in the lower ionosphere.