Global Meteor Network observations of SpaceX Falcon 9 reentry 2025-02-19

This dataset contains video observations by the Global Meteor Network of the re-entry of the SpaceX Falcon 9 trunk above Europe on 2025-02-19 around 03:45 UTC. Around 59 GMN station recorded this event, spread over the United Kingdom, The Netherlands, Germany and Poland.

There are several types of files:

• FF files: these are 10.24 second videos compressed in the four-frame format. They are FITS files with four frames, containing per pixel 1) the maximum value over 256 frames 2) the frame nr (between 0 and 255) where the maximum occurred 3) the mean value of all 256 frames and 4) the RMS of the 256 values.
• FR files: compressed video recordings of detected fireballs. These can be read with the RMS software. The video files contain only a small box around the detected fireball.
• MP4 files: video representations of the FR files created with FRbinViewer from the RMS package.
• Platepar-files: these contain astrometry corresponding to the FITS files. These can be interpreted by the RMS software.
• ECSV files: these contain manually picked points (with SkyFit2.py from RMS) along the track of the reentry. For each point, time and apparent coordinates are recorded. These files can be interpreted by the WesternMeteorPyLib trajectory solver. Note that the station locations in the ecsv files are accurate within 2km. Only one of the fragments of the fragmented rocket body was annotated in the ECSV.