[meteorite-list] A Twisted Meteor Trail Over Tenerife'

From: Chris Peterson <clp_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Fri, 4 Jun 2010 09:37:35 -0600
Message-ID: <B796DEB2855B4554AD51FDFC211F4B29_at_bellatrix>

Personally, I am highly skeptical of the handful of visual reports of
spiraling or zig-zagging meteors. There is no acceptable physical
explanation for such a thing. It is far more likely to be an illusion caused
by saccadic eye movement or by an unusual light curve.

This image was a 59 second continuous exposure, and is a single frame.
There's no way to tell how long the meteor event lasted. It is 7? long, and
if you assume one second the numbers all work out to be pretty reasonable.
But it could have been quite a bit shorter, or a little bit longer.

The distance can be reasonably estimated as 300-400 km, given the high
zenith angle.

Chris

*****************************************
Chris L Peterson
Cloudbait Observatory
http://www.cloudbait.com


----- Original Message -----
From: "Steve Dunklee" <steve.dunklee at yahoo.com>
To: <clp at alumni.caltech.edu>; <meteorite-list at meteoritecentral.com>
Sent: Friday, June 04, 2010 9:03 AM
Subject: Re: [meteorite-list] A Twisted Meteor Trail Over Tenerife'


> In my life I have viewed only two meteors that made an obvious spiral as
> they fell. This is another case of how many licks it takes to get to the
> center of a tootsie pop. The photo has to be examined on a
> pixel basis. If the CCD imager is one of the newer ones then it has a
> frame rate of 60 per second. And there should be pixel loss between each
> frame. The pixel loss should tell how many seconds the meteor was in the
> captured frame. From there the effects of gravity, atmospheric drag and
> velocity can can be plotted to give an aproximate mass. And distance
> calculations. The G forces involved can only be guessed at without knowing
> the actual distance or speed of the meteor. Personally I believe this
> meteor was traveling rather slowly as it fell and was shaped like a planer
> board dragged behind a boat. If it had an external battery power supply it
> would rule out most electromagnetic interference from high powered
> electrical equipment but not
> necessarily all interference.who knows? Steve
Received on Fri 04 Jun 2010 11:37:35 AM PDT