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Re: fall

In a message dated 01/05/98 17:46:59 BST, you write:

<< several years ago i was fortunate enough to witness what i believe was a
 fall,i'm just curious to know if anyone on the list has ever seen
 one.just wondering? >>

I can't be completely certain if I witnessed an actual fall, but whilst
watching the Leonid meteors with my young daughter at around 3am 18th Nov
1996, I saw a very bright, exploding meteor. It exploded about halfway through
it's apparent flight and left a wonderful smoke trail behind it which remained
for about 15 mins. There were no other visible meteors coming from the
explosion and the main part seemed to travel on until it faded. The smoke
trail broke up into fragments after about 5 mins but it was still clearly
visible for a long time afterwards.
There was absolutely no sound though, so it was probably fairly distant if it
was big enough to reach the ground. I could trace it back to the Leonid
radiant without any doubt, but this meteor must have been somewhat larger than
the usual Leonids.
Would anyone hazard a guess at possible size to generate such a visible and
long lasting smoke trail? It wasn't the usual grain of dust to cause something
like that, I'm sure.....it was small by comparison to other reports I've read
but maybe big enough to impact?
It was reported on the Leonid Watch '96 tick sheet along with all of the other
Leonids & sporadics, but I heard no more about it. I believe that England and
the rest of the UK was "rained off" for any Leonid spotting that night, but
Scotland (as ever) had perfect night sight. 

Regards,
Rob.
Rob Elliott homepage: http://members.aol.com/FERNLEA4/index.html