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"
<e...@meteoritesusa.com>
Cc: <meteorite-list@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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