(meteorobs) black meteors

[Peter Brunone]

Hi Eric,

	Remember that if something were truly dark (i.e. emitting no
noticeable light), it would have to be humongous in order for you to see
it from that distance.  At least the size of a 747, if not much larger.

	Now that I understand that nebulous meteors are purported to
emit light in some diffuse fashion, they seem to make sense to me.  The
others (dark meteors) are both physically improbable/impossible and also
demonstrated to happen in impossible locations, like a planetarium,
which makes it highly unlikely (like six sigma unlikely, at least) that
they exist as anything more than optical/neural aberrations.

	Just for the record, when I space out in broad daylight (happens
a lot more these days with a toddler and five-week-old baby not letting
me sleep), I sometimes see things on the surface of my eye or perhaps
somewhere between the cornea and the retina.  My eye drifts after them,
and they appear to move.

Cheers,

Peter

-----Original Message-----
From: meteorobs-bounces at meteorobs.org On Behalf Of Eric Bynum

Dear wonderful meteorobs.org people:
        A nebulosity (per dictionary definition) is a cloudy, diffuse 
phenomenon.  Black meteors may not necessarily be nebulous meteors.
Since 
the background against which the purported "black meteor" is observed
can 
never be entirely black, the existence of something even "darker" than
the 
night sky (even in areas free of light pollution) makes sense to me.

Eric Bynum
Bynum_9 at hotmail.com

>From: "Malcolm J. Currie" <mjc at star.rl.ac.uk>
>Reply-To: Global Meteor Observing Forum <meteorobs at meteorobs.org>
>To: Global Meteor Observing Forum <meteorobs at meteorobs.org>
>Subject: Re: (meteorobs) blind spots and  black meteors
>Date: Sat, 4 Dec 2004 02:31:08 +0000 (GMT)
>
> >         Nebulous meteors, as opposed to dark/black meteors, 
> > definitely
>emit
> > light.  What I saw were not artifacts, they were slow moving, 
> > tear-drop shaped meteors the magnitude of which was not difficult to

> > estimate.
>
>I just want to echo Kim's riposte.  They're like a shooting 
>nebula/Milky Way.  Some I've seen expand along their short paths.  It's

>as if some larger meteoroid with a crust containing dirty ices of 
>micrometeoroids pops as it hits the atmosphere and we see a collection 
>of faint meteors appear together, giving the diffuse effect.  I must do

>a Lew and read the literature on the theories of what they are.
>
>What we'd like is to capture some on video to end the doubts.  They're 
>quite rare.  Still with the video systems available and those to come 
>on line, we ought to get some examples to study soon.
>
> > > This phenomenon has to be an artifact of the eye.
>
>"This" presumably refers to dark meteors, which we believe are 
>artefacts.  Although Kim and I read it (at least initially) as 
>referring to the nebulous meteors too.
>
>Malcolm
>---
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>meteorobs at meteorobs.org 
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