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Re: Looking for Meteorites with THERMAL imaging equipment

Hummm,
I guess my post was not taken seriously,was too long, or was misunderstood.  I covered most of these questions  in my "treatise" on using thermal imaging equipment.  Here is a quick reiteration:

There MUST be solar heating and it works best  after  a bright, sunny, afternoon and a cool, cloudless, night.   If you want to check for the meteorite hiding under the the sage brush--  go look with your bio-optical detectors (aka eyes)!  Thermal is not to Tool d'Choice for that.  Thermal is not magic. Meteorites and old engine blocks will not likely glow nor look like neon lamps.  Place me 2 dozen gallon-sized rocks out on a football field and one  chunk of iron and I can tell you which one is the iron  thru a thermal viewer, 90% of the time or better .  I have done so, at a kilometer, with an AN-TAS4 Thermal Tracker. If you are looking for small stones at longer distances you may be wasting your efforts.  

The Fire Thermal Imaging equipment might be  used for a walk around and I can see its usefulness in certain circumstances.  I was a suggesting a FLIR for surveying a few hundred square yards at a time, noting items which you want to search by light of day.  The potential advantage of thermal is to cover lots of area in some fashion which reduces the amount of actual terrain walking.  Personally, if I were going to walk terrain,  I'd rather do it by daylight and swing my metal detector.   If I did not want to walk or drive a dry lake bed, I might want to use a medium range thermal viewing device in the early evening thru midnight and then at daybreak thru late morning.  

Solid metal has different thermal dynamics then soil or rock.  Knowing how it responds is the key to knowing whether to look for bright spots or dark spots. Metals cool and heat faster, but because of their heat storage capacity over soil and rock,  they will  show up  either brighter or cooler relative to the background at certain times of the day. The right time of day to search is not during the crossover window when background and metallic heat signatures are too close to discriminate.

I too, would like to hear how your experiment comes out.  Especially if you take a selection of meteor-wrongs,  a few Chondrites, and a Gibeon  or two and get an indication if their signatures are distinct enough to distinguish among one or the other samples. It might be good to note the black-bulb temperature, ambient temperature, time of day, and distances.  

Good Luck,
Elton Jones

GeoZay@aol.com wrote:
> 
> In a message dated 99-06-19 17:29:08 EDT, you write:
> 
> Gene >>But the human was emitting its own heat. What I meant was that a
> meteorite
>   that was shaded may not warm up enough to stand out from the ground and the
>   dark green plant.
>    >>
> 
> Another thought just occurred to me after I replied to Gene's comment. Isn't
> the ground usually slightly warmer than the air and plant life a few feet
> above it? I believe it is, particularly on clear nights? I think this would
> cause sufficient heat exchange from the ground to an iron object to stand out
> from small plant life such as Sage brush etc covering it?
> 
> I'm not sure, but I think yesterday while at work I overheard someone talking
> about our dept's budget and I think it was mentioned that money has been set
> aside to buy two of these gadgets? If so, you can bet I will experiment with
> it....at work of course. I have a couple small iron meteorites to use for
> examples. If I heard it right yesterday, and we are getting these devices, it
> most likely will be a few months for them to show up. Most likely will be
> kept with the Battalion chiefs since they would be too expensive to farm out
> to each engine crew. I have a good relationship with my battalion chief, so I
> shouldn't have too much trouble in checking it out a little closer for
> meteorite hunting purposes....that is while at the station.  :o)   I will
> keep everyone informed what I've learned if given the opportunity to play
> with it.
> GeoZay
> 
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