(meteorobs) Determining physical dimensions of a large fireball inthe sky?

[Chris Peterson]

Tom-

As is the case with so much meteor analysis, very little can be determined 
using single station data. I encourage anybody interested in meteors to set 
up two stations! Get a friend involved; the cost is minimal and the data 
gain is immense.

If you have information from two or more stations, you can determine the 
meteor velocity as a function of altitude. This lets you make some very 
reasonable estimates for the size of the body. In practice, you assume a 
meteoroid shape (nearly always spherical), and you then solve for the 
observed velocity profile assuming different densities. The trickiest bit is 
isolating the effect of mass loss due to ablation, but a lot of good work 
has been done on modeling ablation.

I have software I've written that largely automates all of this, given 
multistation data. You can even set it up in a fairly simple spreadsheet.

Chris

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


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Thomas Ashcraft" <ashcraft at heliotown.com>
To: "Global Meteor Observing Forum" <meteorobs at meteorobs.org>
Sent: Monday, October 12, 2009 9:32 PM
Subject: (meteorobs) Determining physical dimensions of a large fireball 
inthe sky?


> Here's another question for this forum:
>
> Can the actual physical dimensions of a fireball in the sky be
> determined with accuracy from video captures? I am not referring to
> brightness magnitude in this question but rather to the dimensions of
> the meteoroid/meteor itself before and during its burn.