(meteorobs) "Corkscrew Meteor" on Space.com Image of the Day 7th Jan

[David Entwistle]

Perhaps not such a mystery for anyone familiar with astrophotography,
but Space.com have an image of the day titled - 'Corkscrew Meteor
Mystery'. You can see the picture and story here.

http://www.space.com/imageoftheday/image_of_day_050107.html

There are additional comments and opinions here.

http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/01/07/2226253&from=rss

The picture is captioned as follows...

While photographing the recently discovered comet Machholz the other
night, Jimmy Westlake's mind wandered back to a mystery that'd been
bugging him for years. On Jan. 1, 1986, he was photographing another
comet, Halley's, through his homemade 8-inch reflecting telescope.

"About one minute into the exposure, I watched a meteor zip through the
field of the telescope," said Westlake, a professor of physical sciences
at Colorado Mountain College in Steamboat Springs, CO. "I stopped the
exposure at two minutes."

That night, when he developed the roll of slide film, he was astounded
at what he saw: 

"Crossing the tail of Halley's comet was a corkscrew meteor trail with
no fewer than 25 twists in it," he said. "I had read of some meteors
appearing to have curves or kinks in their trails, but I had never seen
a photo of one."
-- 
David Entwistle