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Re: (meteorobs) Re-entry

Jure,

You are located further from the equator than most of the active launch
sites, so that will reduce the number of reentries you can see.  Only
Russian- and polar-launched items can reach your latitude.  I am at lat
26.5N while Cape Canaveral is at about 28N so there is a lot to see from here.  

Several times a year I see a very slow (slower than any natural meteor),
intense orange, fragmenting meteor that lasts a number of seconds.  If it
has no westward component to its direction of travel, I immediately assume a
reentry of something occurred.  I have never seen a major reentry, either
large debris or complete satellite,  which ought to be well up in minus
magnitudes (perhaps  -8 or  -10?).  The best I have done is only  -1m, and
the small ones range down to  +4m.  Many people don't see any color in
meteors ; in my case, I have never seen one of these objects that wasn't the
characteristic orange color which is strong enough to show easily even at
magnitude +4.  All components of the event are orange, down to the smallest
sparks.   The ones I have seen must be bits of debris that finally fell out
of orbit.   The range of durations is most frequently 3 to 5 seconds.

When a reentry starts it has a central bright body which is dropping off a
trail of sparks and fragments.  These can be either uniform or irregular in
brightness.  They don't fly off to the side ; the entire bunch of fragments
continues in the original direction of motion as a procession of small
objects generally up to 10 degrees long.  Sometimes a few fragments get
ahead of the main body.  Sometimes there is no main body ; the event then
looks like a moving sparkly train.

In the fall of 1997 a spectacular reentry of a Russian satellite took place
over the state of Washington.  It broke into two major pieces early, and
each of these formed its own long debris procession.  The UFO crowd still
has its bowels in an uproar  talking about this one ; they summarily reject
the obvious cause and are continuing  "research"  into what kind of visitors
we received that night.

Norman



Norman W. McLeod III
Asst Visual Program Coordinator
American Meteor Society

Fort Myers, Florida
nmcleod@peganet.com

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