[meteorite-list] Dumb Questions About Meteors & Meteorites

From: Meteorites USA <eric_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Tue, 26 Jan 2010 09:31:03 -0800
Message-ID: <4B5F26D7.9020805_at_meteoritesusa.com>

I think it's the smoke left from the meteoroid as it cooled rapidly
after incandescence, hence the reason for the tapering of the train. My
theory is simple. As the meteoroid cooled (directly after incandescence)
it produced less smoke, and therefore the train seems to taper to
nothingness. The meteoroid is in fact still there, yet invisible to the
camera. Also there is a certain "squiggly" nature to the trail
suggesting an irregularly shaped object tumbling through the air. If it
were still incandescent or in an oriented flight I would think the
meteoroid would be flying a straighter path producing a "cleaner" trail.
The irregular path, and tapering of the trail seems to me to suggest
that the small thin trail is a smoke train and and not the meteoroid
incandescence. Perhaps both?

I've been a photographer for a LONG time, and depending on the shutter
speed of the camera at the time of exposure, it's very possible that the
"trail" is the smoke left by the meteoroid, left over time during
exposure. Meteors are very fast, only a few hundredths of a second in
duration, and if the shutter speed was say 1/30 second then you're
looking at a mush longer span of time relative to the duration of the
meteor. Therefore I would guess that what I'm looking at is smoke train,
and not incandescence or plasma. It could be the "blur" of the object
itself moving across the frame during the exposure however that since
there are distortions in the symmetry of the trail this looks more like
smoke dissipating than the streak left by the actual meteoroid, which
would most likely be straighter with less distortion.

Take a look at another enhanced version of the photo...Leonid Closeup:
http://www.meteoritesusa.com/images/Leonid_Meteor-wikipedia-cc-3.jpg

If this is the continued incandescence why is the "trail" not straight?
Was the meteoroid still "glowing" hot thereby producing a visible light
bright enough to be picked up by the camera?

Eric




On 1/26/2010 8:13 AM, GeoZay at aol.com wrote:
>>> Take a look at this Leonid photo. As you can see after the incandescence
>>>
> there's a small smoke train shooting out from the tip of the meteor. Is
> that in fact the smoke train from the particle/meteoroid just before
> entering dark flight? Or was this just the last bit of the meteoroid
> burning up?<<
>
> I'd say it was just the last bit of the meteoroid burning up. It was
> dimming and the camera caught what little exposure it could at that point.
> GeoZay
>
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Received on Tue 26 Jan 2010 12:31:03 PM PST