(meteorobs) Re: Meteor picture from Mars?

vaubaill vaubaill at imcce.fr
Tue Jun 7 12:41:30 EDT 2005


Hi you all,

Just a few words to say that the radiant was well "below" the horizon, 
and that physics law are not broken. Indeed grazer meteors (on the Earth 
or on Mars) are perturbed by the gravity of  the planet. The slower the 
meteoroid the higher the perturbation. This effect makes the observed 
radiant to "rise" a little bit compare to the theoritical radiant (i.e. 
without the planetary perturbation). That explains why you can see the 
very first meteors even if the "radiant" is still below the horizon.
In the case of a meteoroid ejected by comet 114P/Wisemmann-Skiff and 
Mars, the relative velocity is very low (11 km/s), and the deviation of 
the radiant is up to 15°. The observed meteor had a radiant less than 
10° below the horizon.

Jeremie Vaubaillon

-- 
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* Jeremie VAUBAILLON
* Dept. of Physics & Astronomy
* University of Western Ontario
* London, Ontario
* N6A 3K7
* CANADA
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