(meteorobs) spectacular meteor recorded

Sirko Molau sirko at molau.de
Tue Oct 19 16:08:58 EDT 2004


Folks,

on October 17, 2004, at 02:06:39 UT, my camera AVIS2 captured one of the most
spectacular meteors I ever saw. The meteor lasted at least seven (!) seconds and
left a persistent train that could be traced in subsequent detections for more
than half an hour. I suppose, it was the re-entry of some man-made object. 

Unfortunately, my meteor detection software MetRec is only able to record
meteors up to 4 seconds. After that, MetRec stopped the detection and saved the
meteor to disk. 0.7 seconds later, it continued the detection of the same meteor
until it left the field of view with about 5 deg/second angular velocity after
another 2 seconds. Outside the field of view the meteor must still have been
visible for some time!

I created two AVI files (340 kB each, DivX-encoded) of the event. The first one
is unguided, and the second one shows an additional window centered at the
meteor head:

http://www.molau.de/temp/reentry1.avi
http://www.molau.de/temp/reentry2.avi

The jump in the movie is because of the interrupted meteor detection described
above.

What I find fascinating in these movies is that towards the end the meteor has
no well-defined head anymore, but gets more and more enlongated. It seems to me
that the meteoroid desintegrated gradually. Contrary to ordinary fireballs, the
light curve shows no sign of variation or flares.

I hope you enjoy it.

Best,
Sirko Molau  

-- 
************************************************************ 
*   Sirko Molau                 *                          *
*   Abenstalstr. 13b            *              __          *
*   D-84072 Seysdorf            *       " 2B v 2B "        *
*   Germany                     *                          * 
*   phone: +49-8752-869438      *             Shakespeare  *
*   email: sirko at molau.de       *                          *
*   www  : www.molau.de         *                          *
************************************************************


More information about the Meteorobs mailing list