(meteorobs) grazers, big skys, and perseids

[drobnock]

This past week end, 11-13 August, we left the ridge and valley region of
Pennsylvania to travel to north western Pennsylvania where there was a
180 degree view of the sky near Cambridge Springs/Edinboro. The intent
was to observe for vlf signatures from meteors. As with all good
intentions the quality of the ether was heavy on 60 cycle hum and not a
quiet sky for VLF observations of meteors.

Over all the visual observations were not disappointing.  Whilst setting
up Saturday there was a strong activity for 45 minutes between 9:15 to
10:00 local time.

One of the observations was a possible earth grazer. Those that saw the
event (less than six seconds) were split 50/50 between a "fireball" or a
tumbling satellite.

So the question is -- with the amount of residual man made objects in
the sky,  estimated to be 4 million tons (1999) of junk or 110,000
objects of 1 cm in size, when these object do reenter, say during an
event as the Perseids, are the counts skewed?  Also those who observe
sporadics -- is it  a bolt reentering?  Or is it an object that " at
noon was a stone three times the distance of the moon away. And six
weeks earlier further away than the sun. (Nininger 1933)."

The grazer was an unexpected event. And the big sky is not quiet  for
radio observations.

http://www.space.com/spacewatch/space_junk.html

George John Drobnock