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Re: (meteorobs) Small comets and meteors






Friday  June 6,1997


Here is a little more meteor related info gleaned from Dr. Louis Frank's
THE BIG SPLASH.  I am up to page 100 or so and hope to report more as I
read further.  

In chapter 10 Dr. Frank writes about Ernst Opik and the Table of Meteor
Luminosities and a phenomenon known as "Opik's Dustballs". Page 83: "A
small comet of water-snow impregnated with minor amounts of cosmic dust
should emulate the visual signature of these dustballs."...."Dustballs
start out like a very big bright rock, but travel only a short distance,
then snuff out." page 82

He gets slightly into "nebulous meteors" on page 85. "Nebulous meteors are
generally thought to be loose clumps of fine debris of cometary origin. But
unfortunately there is no organized information on these observations.
There is nothing that allows us to document what is happening here. So I
cannot say with any certainty that nebulous meteors have any bearing on the
topic of small comets."

More later,
Tom Ashcraft