[meteorite-list] Images of Wales meteor (no boring aeroplane)

From: (wrong string) ørn Sørheim <bsoerhei_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Thu Apr 22 10:28:22 2004
Message-ID: <200310052309.BAA14716_at_mail47.fg.online.no>

Rob, Marco & List,
I haven't had time to write anything today.
But I'm managed to read trough 99% of the posting on this subject.
Marco comments that the trail behind the head should be sunlit since
it must be higher in the sky. Some points why it might still not
appear sunlit:

a) As the trail is further east, the sun sets earlier is this direction,
so the sun may have set from this point, or be obscured by clouds on
the horizon, which we onbserve there are, certainly. This even though
its probably great height.
b) If this is a rather big chunk of burning rock, it would produce a rather
thick trail of smoke and debris. As we know, billowing clouds of 'see
through' water vapour gets dark if they are thick enough.
If this trail contains much dust, you won't see the light shining on top,
just the dark underside. Remeber how much the water in the rainclouds
darkens such clouds.
c) As the the head is closer to the sun, and probably more thinned out, as
the result of an explosion, the sun will shine through, and also more light will
be reflected it from because of the sun close by. Look at clouds near the sun
at sunset, they are almost as bright as the sun. That fooled you once today,
Rob, didn't it :-) Also the head is extended, collecting more light than a
narrow
tail.
I think all this explain why the tail is dark, the head bright.
Look also at picture 1 by Jonathan, a great part of the tail is light near
the head, while dark on the underside, but this light gradually disappear
as you go backwards! Clearly a result of the angle under which the
different parts of the tail is viewed.

Also someone commented he thought the tail was behind the cirrus clouds, while
the head was in front. In practice this would of course be VERY difficult
to accomplish, indeed. While not easy to see in Jonathan's first image,
it certainly is easy to see in his second. Clearly behind the clouds there.

1st image here:http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap031001.html
2nd image
here:http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/image/0310/fireball2_burnett_big.jpg

I thank Sterling K Webb for his extremely interesting post today, which explain
how daylight fireballs evade people's notice. Great posting! Recommended!

Rob, how you suddenly today came down from a high trajectory to 10k,
I don't really understand?? Just because Marco said the sun was 1 hour further
on in azimuth? A dark, not bright tail?? How do you reason, here??

One IMPORTANT thing I found today is this:
The cloud formation in the Pencoed 1ST image and the Porthcawl image have
INDENTICAL
form and placement. Means with 100% shurety they are taken within 1 or 2
minutes.
Great help to us.
The INCREDIBLE thing is, they have also the exact same relative placement
**in relation** to the meteor cloud, I repeat the EXACT same placement!
How is this possible, when the observers are placed so far away from each
other!!??

Some solutions:
1) The two observers are on the exact same line of sight.
Not really possible as the object have some height in the sky, and Jonathan is
probably higher up in the terrain than Julian. The different steepness of
the tail
also counter this.
2) The two objects have more or less the exact same height. That is: in the
same position in the sky, really the object at this moment crosses the
cloud deck. Means again the head of the cloud is most probabably below 10 km.
To COUNTER this again is the following: In Jonathan's 2nd picture from
Pencoed the bright meteor head cloud have moved quite noticeable compared
to the cirrus clouds in front of it in the intervening 4m 14s (southwards).
Then again the meteor head cloud can't be in the same postion and height as the
clouds!!
3)A better solution??

I have here a riddle, an enigma I haven't been able to solve.
You will find what I have seen in those pictures. It's 1 hour past midnight
here,
I can't really think clear....
Do maybe anyone else have another solution to these observed facts??
I'll ponder it untill tomorrow..

At this point it would have been fine to have exact positions of both observers,
toghether with az1,h1 and az2,h2...

Regards,
Bjørn Sørheim
Received on Sun 05 Oct 2003 07:09:19 PM PDT