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(meteorobs) Re: fireball + METEOR
The meteor described here,
>Tuesday, July 6th at 8:25, ...
>seemed to start a few degrees short of zenith and in less than a
>second, disappeared just above the horizon.
is far faster than any meteor I have ever seen, and I have recorded nearly
89000 of them. To cover this angular distance would take a minimum of 4
seconds by my reckoning, and that is Leonid speed. It would decelerate
toward the end due to greater true distance. Usually estimates from
inexperienced observers are too long, often by factors of 3 to 10.
-------
This meteor,
> Field said the meteor could have been either metal or rock and was
> probably as big a a car.
has a rather popular size attributed to it. One example was a 1978 daylight
fireball seen from the lower east coast of Florida, landing and "sizzling"
in the Atlantic, resulting in a fruitless search by marine biologists
"looking for something about the size of a car." How could they know how
big the body was? They spent several days dragging a square mile of ocean
bottom, naturally in the part nearest the coast. It was a classic case of
thinking it was very close when it was some hundreds of miles away.
Norman
Norman W. McLeod III
Asst Visual Program Coordinator
American Meteor Society
Fort Myers, Florida
nmcleod@peganet.com
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