(meteorobs) Green Meteors

[James Beauchamp]

Working heavily in the flight test world, I've come to learn that observations with such interpretation should be heavily segregated from analysis.  They remain qualitative in nature.  If a sampling size is large enough to support something larger, it is addressed according to the variation therein, but ultimately human interpretation negates much of the scientific value.
 
The right answer to this enigma is to instrument sensors that don't have grey matter filters or biological variations.  Spectrometers are the only way to make such a distinction.
 
Otherwise, the colors are religated to the "prettiness" factor.
 
Personally, I believe the colors are simply as they have been predicted - whatever happened to be in the oblated material at that magic moment in time.  As electrons fall back into the proper orbits, the laws of the universe determine the spectrum.  It's probably a matter of luck.  A couple of grains of olivine here, carbon there, very variable when you have 1-2 seconds of massive energy at work.
 
Maybe the next generation of allsky cameras should incorporate rough spectral data?  It's done with color CCD's in a lot of sensing systems today.


--- On Wed, 6/15/11, Thomas Ashcraft <ashcraft at heliotown.com> wrote:


From: Thomas Ashcraft <ashcraft at heliotown.com>
Subject: Re: (meteorobs) Green Meteors
To: "Meteor science and meteor observing" <meteorobs at meteorobs.org>
Date: Wednesday, June 15, 2011, 11:39 AM


On 6/15/11 10:03 AM, Wayne Hally wrote:
> The problem occurs because some people hype the greenness of fireballs 
> as if there is significance. There is no demonstrated scientific 
> analysis that supports that conclusion.
There might be an electrical or electromagnetic significance in regards 
to green fireballs but I am still gathering data from my observations.

Thomas  /  Radio Fireball Observatory  / New Mexico
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