[meteorite-list] Very Bright Fireball Over Europe on Halloween Night

From: Michael Mulgrew <mikestang_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Wed, 4 Nov 2015 15:39:11 -0800
Message-ID: <CAMseTy1ug2GjVnib9okJN951or-7x2jkQ4o0ya4S=HFV44V5TA_at_mail.gmail.com>

Different colors because there are different constituents in our atmosphere.

Unless people are recording meteors with a spectrograph reporting
"color" is useless since everyone sees colors differently, and the
human eye is hardly a scientific calibrated device.

Michael in so. Cal.

On Wed, Nov 4, 2015 at 2:16 PM, kashuba via Meteorite-list
<meteorite-list at meteoritecentral.com> wrote:
> Rob, Marco,
>
> OK, so color isn't important. But why the different colors? Not green
> can't mean no oxygen. Is the green overwhelmed by other colors? Why?
>
> - John
>
> John Kashuba
> Bend, Oregon
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Meteorite-list [mailto:meteorite-list-bounces at meteoritecentral.com] On
> Behalf Of Rob Matson via Meteorite-list
> Sent: Wednesday, November 04, 2015 12:54 AM
> To: 'meteorite-list'
> Subject: Re: [meteorite-list] Very Bright Fireball Over Europe on Halloween
> Night
>
> HI All,
>
> Marco took the words out of my mouth. Getting tired of hearing that a green
> meteor tells you anything about its composition. I know that it's natural
> for
> people to think the most important thing they can report about a meteor
> is its color, but I wish various broadcast media would do the public a
> service
> and disabuse them of this notion. It would be far better if witnesses
> could be trained to get in the habit of counting the duration accurately,
> and noting the exact time of the meteor to the nearest minute. Seeing as
> how almost everyone has a cell phone these days, and all cell phones have
> accurate clocks, there really is no excuse to get the time wrong. Yet even
> a casual browse of the AMS fireball site reveals that people clearly don't
> think getting the time right is important. And even more obvious is that
> most people have no business reporting anything about fireball starting
> and ending bearings and elevation angles. --Rob
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Meteorite-list [mailto:meteorite-list-bounces at meteoritecentral.com] On
> Behalf Of Marco Langbroek via Meteorite-list
> Sent: Wednesday, November 04, 2015 12:06 AM
> To: meteorite-list at meteoritecentral.com; baalke at zagami.jpl.nasa.gov
> Subject: Re: [meteorite-list] Very Bright Fireball Over Europe on Halloween
> Night
>
>> A lot of folks say it looked green to them, which means it may have been
>> metallic;
>
>
> It is a perpetuated misunderstanding that meteor colours are primarily due
> to
> their composition. It's a science myth inspired by High School Bunsen burner
>
> experiments that appears hard to kill.
>
> While composition in some cases does have some influence on the colour, it
> is
> actually the composition of the atmosphere that is usually dominant for our
> perception of meteor colours.
>
> That certainly is true for green colours. Meteor spectra show that meteors
> usually are very strong at the "forbidden" Oxygen line at 5577 Angstrom
> (557.7
> nm). This line is due to atmospheric Oxygen, the same atmospheric Oxygen
> exitation line also responsible for the green colours of Aurora.
>
> So green meteor colours are likely atmospheric in origin and say little
> about
> the meteoroids' composition.
>
> - Marco
>
> -----
> Dr Marco (asteroid 183294) Langbroek
> Dutch Meteor Society (DMS)
>
> e-mail: dms at marcolangbroek.nl
> http://www.marcolangbroek.nl
>
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Received on Wed 04 Nov 2015 06:39:11 PM PST