[meteorite-list] The Wales event

From: Matson, Robert <ROBERT.D.MATSON_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Thu Apr 22 10:28:21 2004
Message-ID: <AF564D2B9D91D411B9FE00508BF1C86901B4EDCD_at_US-Torrance.mail.saic.com>

Hi Bj=F8rn and List,

> As it says quite clearly - if you read what the websites
> write about what happened before the boy took the first
> picture - I hardly did believe for a second that the bright
> head of the meteor was a recording of an explosion or
> afterglow of such. It is for sure just the low sun shining
> on an extended meteor [burst] cloud.

I don't think anyone is arguing that two photographers had
the extremely good fortune of catching the bolide in flight.

>..His boyfriend had to observe and tell the boy that there
> was this weird cloud in the sky .. then the boy had to grab
> the camera.. most probably zoom it .. then take the picture.

What we haven't heard is any comment about "dynamics" observed
by the first boy. Did he just happen to notice the cloud all
of a sudden, or did he actually see it in the act of being
formed. I feel almost certain that it was the former, and if
so, I submit that you would have to have been BLIND not to see
the bolide that would produce such a trail.

> As for your arguments Robert:
> 1. Sonic boom.
> There isn't always [heard].
> There wasn't in New Orleans, and lot of other cases.

The New Orleans stone isn't even remotely in the same size category
as the bolide necessary to produce the Wales display.

> Are you shure this was be a really big meteor?

If it ~was~ a meteor, then YES. At least 1000 times more energy
than New Orleans, for instance.

> 3. Observers.
> We are at the start of collecting evidence. Observers don't
> post here, right. Took some days to get picture II, more
> times to develop the paper, slide ones..

A bolide producing that kind of display under clear skies at
that time of day should have been seen by thousands of people.
So far not one person saw the bolide. How can that be???
The UK isn't exactly the middle of the Gobi desert. If it
had been seen, it would have been on their 10 o'clock news.

> Magnitude -20!, where do you get that number from?

Okay, perhaps I exaggerated by one or two magnitudes, but I
was mentally putting it in a slightly lower class than Tagish Lake
which peaked at magnitude -22.

> BTW, most meteorite dropping fireballs cluster around -9 I
> read somewhere.

Oh, I think it's probably even dimmer than that. But this would
have been far from an ordinary fireball.

> Also this was a daylight occurence, remember. 'Fireball' is not
> the correct word to use probably, because it would be easier to
> spot the cloud afterwards, than with an average, or even less
> than average, fireball in a bright sky.

Believe me, spotting a fast moving object at magnitude -10 is
no problem at all -- even at high noon. If this was a bolide, it
would have been several hundred times brighter than -10. Believe
me, people would have seen it. It would have cast shadows.

> 3. Contrail shape.
> Damit!, in the second picture from Jon Burnett, it is
> **clearly** starting to corkscrew. Also I guess if you watch
> those missile launches from Vandenberg base you are thinking
> of a MUCH longer timespan than the short time between picture
> 1 and 2 from the boy.

No. It takes only a minute or two to severely distort those
contrails. This is what a bolide dust trail looks like:
http://phobos.astro.uwo.ca/~pbrown/tagish/dustcloud.html

And check out the images at the bottom of this page:
http://www.alaska.net/~judyhall/fireball.htm

You can't honestly say that the Wales event looks anything
like this.

However, as you point out, it's still early. More evidence may
come in. I'm not 100% convinced that it isn't a bolide, but the
evidence so far (or more the lack of it) is certainly leaning
that way. I'm willing to bet DoD sensors didn't pick up
anything, which would close the book for me.

--Rob
Received on Fri 03 Oct 2003 08:47:02 PM PDT