(meteorobs) Morse Code or Dash-DOT!!-Dash Meteor (N. Calif.)

[Wayne Watson]

Chris, thanks. Good to get your input. We just got through about 5 days 
of cloudy and damp weather, and it was clearing up last night; however, 
it's conceivable that some areas of the sky were obscured for other 
observers. Anyway, I'll keep my fingers crossed that others gathered 
data on it.

Chris Peterson wrote:
> Hi Wayne-
>
> Very nice. Looks to be several times brighter than the nearly full 
> Moon. Quite a few people must have seen it that early in the evening. 
> If you can get another angle on it, I think you'll find it was fairly 
> deep in the atmosphere when it fragmented. This didn't skip or go back 
> into space- it came down into denser air and fragmented, producing a 
> bright burst. Most of the original mass was lost in under a second at 
> that point. What was left continued, and then experienced a second 
> fragmentation. The resulting terminal explosion probably consumed what 
> was left. Most likely no meteorites were produced, but sometimes 
> fragmentation events can produce meteorites because very small 
> components may slow down fast enough to avoid ablating away.
>
> Chris
>
> *****************************************
> Chris L Peterson
> Cloudbait Observatory
> http://www.cloudbait.com
>
>
> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Wayne Watson" 
> <sierra_mtnview at sbcglobal.net>
> To: <meteorobs at meteorobs.org>
> Sent: Monday, September 24, 2007 5:33 PM
> Subject: (meteorobs) Morse Code or Dash-DOT!!-Dash Meteor (N. Calif.)
>
>
> A fireball blazed over our Sacramento skies late last night, and was 
> caught
> on my video camera. I would guess this one left the atmosphere. No 
> reports
> of debris that I know of yet. See a composite and QT mov (movie) file 
> of the
> event at <http://speckledwithstars.net/meteor_beginnings.html>. Scroll to
> the bottom.
>
> I suppose it might be possible some debris fell over somewhere by 
> Redding;
> however, presently this is just a guess. Perhaps visual observers saw 
> it. It
> occurred around 11:07 PM (PDT). It appears to have glanced off the
> atmosphere and kept going after the burst (Dot). It was going NW from 
> here
> in Nevada City, CA.
>
> ---
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-- 
           Wayne Watson (Watson Adventures, Prop., Nevada City, CA)

             (121.015 Deg. W, 39.262 Deg. N) GMT-8 hr std. time)
              Obz Site:  39° 15' 7" N, 121° 2' 32" W, 2700 feet

           "Education is not the filling of a pail but the 
            lighting of a fire." -- William Butler Yeats

                    Web Page: <www.speckledwithstars.net/>