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Re: (meteorobs) Bolides
Mr Zay writes:
> Does anyone know what makes a Fireball become a Bolide?
Hey there George,
While reading "The Physics and Astronomy of Meteors, comets, and meteorites"
by Gerald Hawkins (1964) last night, I came across the following:
" ... at the other end of the magnitude scale we enter the regime of
fireballs and bolides. In the past astronomers made a distinction between
these two phenomena; a fireball was a meteor bright enough to be reported
by the 'man on the street', and a bolide was a very bright meteor that
exploded in the upper atmosphere. The IAU has now defined the terms to mean
one and the same thing. A fireball or bolide is a meteor with a luminosity
that equals or exceeds that of the brightest planets..."
"It is suspected that they (fireballs) are not related to meteoroid
particles and, therefore, have not been ejected by comets. An object
weighing 200lbs is required to prodice a fireball as bright as the full
moon. It is difficult to conceive how the loose dust associated with a
cometary nucleus could be collected together to form such a massive object.
More probably a fireball is related to the asteroids or monir planets..."
I realize this is ancient text (1964). Are these veiws currently held
is the circles of professional astrophysics and meteor astronomy??
Joseph