(meteorobs) Question on an interesting meteor -Enhanced Picture

[pat_branch]

--- In meteorobs at yahoogroups.com, "Chris Peterson" <clp at ...> wrote:
>
> How high? This was an Orionid meteor, with a speed of 66 km/s. It is seen 
> originating 23° from the radiant, and has a 10° path length. Assuming it 
> first became visible at a height of 100 km, that means we are seeing the 
> path from 100 km high down to 65 km high- the meteor is covering a vertical 
> distance of 35 km.
> 
> I don't know much about atmospheric winds in the mesosphere (does anyone?), 
> but certainly at lower heights- say 30 km- you would expect a wide range of 
> both wind directions and speeds as you crossed that much vertical distance. 
> Just the sort of thing to fragment a dust trail, as seems to be occurring in 
> the image.
> 
> The longest debris trail is about 3° long, or perhaps 4 km long at height. 
> If it had two minutes to evolve, that would imply a wind speed of 33 m/s. A 
> quick literature search suggests that mesospheric wind speeds are on the 
> order of 50 m/s, so this is all consistent with trail dispersal, as well.
> 
> Chris
> 

Well I doubt I will ever be convinced this is wind blown train and I am sure others could never be convinced it isn't, but it is fun and educational to debate it. Some comments to this calculation. Winds of 50m/s are rare in the mid latitudes and most calculations I know limit our concern to speeds of about 30m/s. The lenght of the debris trail assumes you measure perpendicular to the trail, but most of those are likely at some angle into or out of the image so they could be considerable longer. 100km seems high, but lowering that also changes the calculations to lower numbers. It does not seem possible that material or gas ejected from a meteor would leave a 4 km long track either...so not sure what to think - maybe camera effects.

I have seen about 100 rocket trails passing thru the upper atmosphere. I have seen some great and interesting patterns, but nothing that even remotely resembles that picture. You do not get sharp edges and pointed ends. I have seen loops created, but not sharp points in at least 4 different directions, without the rest of the train being effected? If this was taken over a long period of time then the winds were very mild and constant that day. 
It would be interesting to contact the photog and find out exactly when and where it was taken and how long it was.