(meteorobs) Re: Meteor picture from Mars?

Karl Antier ka.antier at wanadoo.fr
Tue Jun 7 14:06:15 EDT 2005


Hi all meteor observers !

This Martian meteor always raises questions in my mind, and they don't want
to leave... So I decide to ask them to the list...
First, how do we know the apparent speed of the meteor photographed ? As far
as I know from my non-professionnal experience, to make the association of a
meteor with a parent comet, we must know this apparent velocity to deduce
the real speed of it and thus see if it fits the orbital elements of the
comet, mustn't we ?
The second point is that, assuming that know the apparent speed of this
meteor, how can we call them Cepheids ? I mean, when one sees a meteor in
the sky and traces its path back, it crosses several constellations.If we
can say that the shower it is associated with can't be closer that two times
the length of the path of the meteor, I thought it could then be associated
with all the possible radiants that cosses the prolonged path, whatever its
distance from the beginning of the meteor was, and whatever its apparent
velocity was, am I wrong ?

So, I was wondering how we could say that such a meteor could be part of a
shower just by observing one memeber :if we select randomly one meteor
observed on Earth, and if we tried to associate it with a comet, wouldn't we
find a possible parent comet, even if it's a sporadic one ?
The other question is to know how we can say that the radiant is in Cepheus,
and not in a closer, or farther constellation ?

Thanks in advance for the answers !
And clear skies to all !

Karl




More information about the Meteorobs mailing list