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Re: (meteorobs)subvisible meteors was Zodiacal light questions
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>
>Are there sub-visible meteor showers in which individual meteor particles
>are never massive enough to create incandescence visible to the human eye?
>
>Tom Ashcraft
>72632.1427@compuserve.com
>>>Aside from the continuing infall of cosmic dust you mean? I have seen a
diffuse meteor once during a Geminid shower. It was a red, small but
definitely diffuse object. The red colour suggests a cloud of small hence
more rapidly slowed objects. Presumably if objects were much smaller they
would not get hot enough to glow. But I have only ever seen such a
phenomenon once.<<<
Nick
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Nick, Bob L, and all,
"The red colour suggests a cloud of small hence more rapidly slowed
objects." Interesting. I have not heard this before.
I'm wondering if there might be individual comets (or other parent bodies)
that are comprised of molecules that would not incandesce upon entering the
earth's ionosphere. Either the dust would be too fine or its composition
wouldn't "burn." Yet this certain dust might be detected and distinguished
from general cosmic dust infall by natural phenomena it might effect, such
as zodiacal light or another phenomenon known as "Es." (A somewhat
mysterious E-layer ionosphere phenomenon that radio meteor observers
encounter at regular points along the earth's orbit.)
Clear skies,
Tom Ashcraft
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