(meteorobs) Meteorobs day and night time meteors

stange stange34 at sbcglobal.net
Sat Jul 19 10:41:49 EDT 2008


Neon and other gasses can be thermally excited from sunlight, heat, RF etc.

The flourescing "threshold" is effectively lowered requiring less energy to 
excite the gas. In the coldness of the upper atmosphere whether daytime of 
night time I should think there would be little noticeable difference in 
energy required of the same meteor to ionize gasses.


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "drobnock" <drobnock at penn.com>
To: <meteorobs at meteorobs.org>
Sent: 2008/07/19 06:49
Subject: (meteorobs) Meteorobs day and night time meteors


> Question for the group.
>
> If it were possible to see a - 6 magnitude fireball with the same
> brilliance in the day time as at night,  would the same amount of energy
> be needed to ionize the gas around a meteor to be a visual -6
> meteor?     Consider that the same fireball in question is viewed both
> in the day and  at night. The meteor being viewed  is of the same
> composition, speed entering the atmosphere, trajectory, and  mass. The
> same fire ball in all factors.
>
> There is  event  known as the "dark effect"  that occurs with certain
> inert gasses - neon being one of them is electrically excited. It is
> known that a neon glow tube requires less energy to excite the gas in
> the tube if the tube is exposed to sun light as being started in the
> dark.
>
> Other gases may have similar characteristics.
>
> Consider for the question that most of our atmosphere is made up of
> nitrogen(78% by volume) and  oxygen (21% by volume). The remaining 1% of
> the atmospheric gases are known as trace gases because they are present
> in such small concentrations.  This question is considering that the
> most abundant  trace gases are argon (approximately 1% by volume).
> Others include  neon, helium, krypton and xenon may exhibit the "dark
> effect" when ionized.
>
> Those observing meteors by radar, is there a  quantitative difference in
> the density of the trail for night and day time meteors?
>
> Thanks for any comments.
>
> George John Drobnock
>
>
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