[meteorite-list] Dumb Questions About Meteors & Meteorites

From: Meteorites USA <eric_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Tue, 26 Jan 2010 10:16:13 -0800
Message-ID: <4B5F316D.8000307_at_meteoritesusa.com>

Thanks Chris, Gary, George, It appeared to be a smoke train at first
glance...

If the meteoroid was still glowing hot and producing light enough to be
recorded by the camera, that would explain the trail and the squiggly
nature produced by the irregular flight. I do have a question for Gary
though. You mentioned it's "too early" for a smoke train to develop. How
do you mean? If the particle is still there, it will rapidly cool to a
point where it cannot produce smoke. When will such a meteoroid/particle
produce a smoke train? Are we looking at both, the smoke "and" the after
glow of the meteoroid? I would assume that if the meteoroid is still hot
enough to glow, it would also be producing smoke, the camera could be
capturing both the glow from the "hot space rock" and the smoke it emits.

After looking at the photo closer I see the same waviness to the entire
path as well.
http://www.meteoritesusa.com/images/Leonid_Meteor-wikipedia-cc-4.jpg

How many meteoroids actually reach the ground? I still don't see a solid
answer on this.

Eric




On 1/26/2010 8:32 AM, Chris Peterson wrote:
> You're just seeing incandescence from the last bit of meteoroid that
> hasn't
> survived the previous (four?) fragmentation events as well as the
> continuous
> ablation. I don't see any evidence in this photo of a smoke train at
> all. If
> one was produced, it would only be visible after the meteor faded
> away, and
> if the exposure continued on for at least a few seconds so the trail
> could
> start to disperse.
>
> Chris
>
> *****************************************
> Chris L Peterson
> Cloudbait Observatory
> http://www.cloudbait.com
>
>
> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Meteorites USA"
> <eric at meteoritesusa.com>
> Cc: <meteorite-list at meteoritecentral.com>
> Sent: Tuesday, January 26, 2010 8:58 AM
> Subject: Re: [meteorite-list] Dumb Questions About Meteors & Meteorites
>
>
>> Hi Robert, Sterling, Erik, Greg, Darren, ALL, Thanks for all the
>> answers...
>>
>> I wanted to include a photo in my question. We're all familiar with
>> Mike Hankey's now world famous PA fireball photo which just happened
>> to catch the fragmentation of a large meteoroid as it was breaking
>> up. This left many smoke trains in the air from each fragment.Now,
>> even though no meteorites have yet to be recovered from this, there
>> is a possibility there will be. But it brings up a question. This was
>> an abnormal fireball and rather large but I've included another photo
>> of a smaller Leonid meteor, with what appears to be a small smoke
>> train emerging from the incandescence and entering dark flight.
>>
>> 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?
>>
>> Leonid:
>> http://www.meteoritesusa.com/images/Leonid_Meteor-wikipedia-cc.jpg
>> Leonid Closeup:
>> http://www.meteoritesusa.com/images/Leonid_Meteor-wikipedia-cc-2.jpg
>>
>> Regards,
>> Eric
>
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Received on Tue 26 Jan 2010 01:16:13 PM PST