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Re: (meteorobs) New Member Peter Stinson & Request for Info...



A number of criterea have been suggested to separate a flare from a
fireball/meteor.  However the problem with this is that the person
reporting the object as a flare has already made a decision as to the
nature of the object and it is difficult (often impossible) to determine
the true nature of the object from a phone discussion with the eye-witness
(as with many UFO sightings).  I've interviewed thousands of fireball
eye-witnesses and the range of reports of the same object can be
astounding.  Duration is probably the worst estimates; factors of 100+
being not uncommon errors.  Curvature if the path is not uncommon in
reports either, and people often report the great-circle arc (e.g. up to
the right in the east, horizontal in the south, and down to the right in
the west), as being the object "curving".

My feeling is that as the general phenomenon of a flare is similar to the
meteoric phenomenon, and that the reporting public are largely ignorant of
one or both phenomena, there is no set of criterea that can be developed
to make an assessment based on visual sightings.  I would tend to rely on
the sightings from people you knew were knowledgable, or demonstrate that
the sightings were only seen from a limited area (consistent with the
height reached by a flare).

Cheers, Rob

Robert H. McNaught
rmn@aaocbn.aaodot gov.au


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