[meteorite-list] Re: APOD Picture of Wales Fireball

From: Marco Langbroek <marco.langbroek_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Thu Apr 22 10:28:20 2004
Message-ID: <003001c389b3$a80113a0$bfc0ea3e_at_HAL>

It is also very instructive to compare this Wales picture with that of the
sunlit dustcloud (not persistent train!) left by the big mag. -21.5 El Paso
bolide of 9 Oct 1997. You can find it in:

A.R. Hildebrandt et al., The El Paso superbolide of October 9, 1997, Lun.
Plan. Sci. 30 (1999).

...which is online available as pdf throught the NASA Astrophysics Data
System.

The El Paso picture is an enhanced video frame taken *about 2 minutes after*
the bolide. When you convert the negative image in the paper to a positive,
the result is actually not too much different from what is visible in the
lower part of the Wales picture: a kind of billowing glowing cloud.

What worries me however is that there are no other reports of this Wales
event, which would also be suspected to produce sonic booms (as the El Paso
event did).

- Marco Langbroek


----- Original Message -----
From: "Peter Jenniskens" <peter_at_max.arc.nasa.gov>
To: <meteorobs_at_atmob.org>
Sent: Friday, October 03, 2003 2:09 PM
Subject: Re: (meteorobs) APOD Picture of Wales Fireball!


> The Wales photograph reminds me of the famous meteor of March 24, 1933,
> from which were deposited the Pasamonte meteorites. Charles M. Brown
> ran outside at the time being startled by a bright light, opened his
> camera and aimed at the bright afterglow in the sky. The subsequent
> pictures looks exactly how the layman would imagine a fireball: a big
> sphere, bright spot at the front, and a waving tail behind. That picture,
> of course was created as much by the photographer's actions as by the
> phenomenon on the sky. Although the Wales photograph is sharp and
> beautiful, it is similar to Brown's classic picture in that a fireball's
> afterglow was portrayed as being the fireball itself. You can find
> Brown's picture in Nininger's books and even in relatively modern
> publications as being presented as the picture of a fireball.
>
> -Peter
>
> ..........................................................................
>
> Peter Jenniskens
>
> The SETI Institute e-mail:
pjenniskens_at_mail.arc.nasa.gov
> 2035 Landings Drive tel: (650) 966-8117 or
604-3086
> Mountain View, CA 94043 fax: (650) 961-9705
>
> http://leonid.arc.nasa.gov
> http://aio.arc.nasa.gov/~leonid/
> The archive and Web site for our list is at http://www.meteorobs.org
> To stop getting all email from the 'meteorobs' lists, use our Webform:
> http://www.meteorobs.org/subscribe.html
>
Received on Fri 03 Oct 2003 09:29:24 AM PDT