(meteorobs) [meteorite-list] Utah, Wyoming, Idaho Bolide 18NOV09

[Chris Peterson]

I'll repeat:

The green seen in fireballs comes from atmospheric oxygen. Composition can 
be seen spectroscopically in emission lines, but the visual color is pretty 
much useless for assessing composition. All the different emission lines 
push the apparent color towards visual white, and no single emission line 
can be strong enough to strongly influence that.

Chris

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


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Meteorites USA" <eric at meteoritesusa.com>
To: "Global Meteor Observing Forum" <meteorobs at meteorobs.org>
Sent: Thursday, November 19, 2009 2:45 PM
Subject: Re: (meteorobs) [meteorite-list] Utah, Wyoming, Idaho Bolide 
18NOV09


> Hi Everyone,
>
> I asked this question about two years ago and it was answered.
>
> Green "can" be iron, but it's not indicative of a solid iron meteoroid,
> meaning it could be an H chondrite or even a mesosiderite, or a
> pallasite. This has all been suggested. Keep in mind almost ALL
> meteorites have some amount of iron in them.
>
> Not to mention, that the only way to verify that is to find the stones
> dropped from that particualr fireball. You need to be able to verify
> that a certain stone comes from a certain fireball event.
>
> Also, iron is not the only mineral that burns green.