(meteorobs) daytime fireball, near Graham NC

[Chris Peterson]

Hi Steven-

What you are trying to do here is fraught with difficulties. In fact, 
it's pretty much impossible even with cameras to accurately triangulate 
a meteor location when the two stations are only 12 miles apart- let 
alone using witness reports, which are notoriously inaccurate (I have 
found that about 5% of witness reports are good enough to use).

Some basic problems:

-If a witness saw a fireball 15° above the horizon, it was almost 
certainly more than 100 miles away.

-There is no way that two observers just a dozen miles apart could see a 
fireball at substantially different altitudes or directions, or with 
different lengths.

-If the fireball had been anywhere near Swepsonville, both observers 
would have seen it almost directly overhead.

Try to work out the radiant. Could this have been a Quadrantid? I 
recorded several bright fireballs in the dawn sky that were part of this 
shower. If your own measurements are accurate, this meteor was most 
likely over Virginia, probably north of Lynchburg.

Chris

*****************************************
Chris L Peterson
Cloudbait Observatory
http://www.cloudbait.com


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Steven Kolins" <smkolins at mac.com>
To: "Global Meteor Observing Forum" <meteorobs at meteorobs.org>
Sent: Friday, January 04, 2008 6:19 PM
Subject: Re: (meteorobs) daytime fireball, near Graham NC


1st view - from near N35° 52' 36"/W 79° 25' 33" looking NNE it was a
very short meteor about 3° long, about 15° above the horizon. I
noticed the time at 7:17am ± <1 min. I saw a super brilliant white
flash in midflight and saw the whole meteor flight.

2nd view - from near N36° 3' 6.8"/ W 79° 23' 12" looking east saw a
wide swath of the meteor trail - some 20°, about 35° above the
horizon. Saw the meteor after flight began, no flash but trailing
orange fiery trail

Triangulating would place the fireball perhaps starting near or north
of Swepsonville, NC and proceeding roughly along NC Hw 119 until it
crossed US Interstate 40-85.

I know several people that should have been along the flight path out
at that time of the morning - some potentially east of the meteor (I
work for the local school system and the second observer also worked
for the school system....)

=    -   -  - - -  -   -    =
Steven Kolins