[meteorite-list] Rock on the ground or not?
From: Lasse Lindh <3l_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Sun, 30 Mar 2008 17:42:08 +0200 Message-ID: <47EFB4D0.1000600_at_comhem.se> Hi Chris That was bad news. I hoped for a small rock out there. I calculated 3 km, but then I used 15 km as terminal height. Regards Lasse Chris Peterson skrev: > Ah. So you're saying that you observed a stationary meteor, that > didn't appear to move across the sky at all? If so, that's the one > special case where you can accurately estimate the fall angle from a > single viewpoint. If the meteor's apparent altitude was +76?, then > that is indeed the fall angle (which is too steep to make this a > promising candidate for meteorite production). > > Being so high in the sky also lets you narrow down both the distance > and the speed. The long duration suggests a slow speed, and a final > height of 30km would be a reasonable estimate. So that would place the > end of the meteor around 7km away from you, on the azimuth of the > event. If something survived, however, it would have continued to fall > at a low speed for several minutes, subject to the effects of the > wind. Any meteorites that landed could have been in any direction from > the retardation point, including behind it (that is, farther away from > you). If you have good wind information, you can make some rough > estimates. > > My own intuition is that the combination of steep descent angle and > lack of terminal explosion suggests that the meteoroid simply ablated > away, and probably didn't produce any meteorites. > > Chris > > ***************************************** > Chris L Peterson > Cloudbait Observatory > http://www.cloudbait.com > > > ----- Original Message ----- From: "Lasse Lindh" <3l at comhem.se> > To: <meteorite-list at meteoritecentral.com> > Sent: Sunday, March 30, 2008 8:34 AM > Subject: Re: [meteorite-list] Rock on the ground or not? > Received on Sun 30 Mar 2008 11:42:08 AM PDT |
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