(meteorobs) Major Fireball Over Southern California, Arizona, and Southern Nevada

[Marco Langbroek]

Op 16-9-2011 00:55, Mike Hankey schreef:
>  Also the trajectory solutions I have, all
> show what looks to be a very shallow entry angle and a lot of
> witnesses are reporting a long event (10+ seconds), so it would be
> interesting to hear some opinions regarding the possibility of space
> trash.

Mike,

 From the video I have seen, the object would appear to go somewhat too fast to 
be space debris. It is difficult to assess the speed from that video however as 
only in the last part, foreground objects appear, so I might be wrong.

A check of SSC Space-Track data shows there is no suitable decay candidate for 
that date. Kosmos 2388 decayed a day earlier in it's perigee over Antarctica, 
and UARS is still up there. No decays expected between these two objects.

Note that laypersons are notorious in overestimating the duration of an event, 
so be careful there.

- Marco

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Dr Marco (asteroid 183294) Langbroek
Dutch Meteor Society (DMS)

e-mail: dms at marcolangbroek.nl
http://www.dmsweb.org
http://www.marcolangbroek.nl
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