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(meteorobs) Re: meteorobs-digest V3 #243



Ont thing to consider is that the dark adapted Human Eye is capable of
detecting Cosmic Rays - when they pass through the eye they give out
cherrenkoff radiation since they are travelling at greater than the (local)
speed of light. There is a mention of this in 'A Man on the Moon' by Andrew
Chaiken - the Apollo astronauts had much more exposure being above the
astmosphere. I beleive the statement about the eye came from Prof Malcom
Longair.

Since these are inside the eye they would be seen as flashes rather than
defined objects - does this agree with your experiances ?

John Murrell


Message text written by INTERNET:meteorobs@jovian.com
>In a message dated 12/20/1999 2:21:29 PM Eastern Standard Time, 
owner-meteorobs-digest@jovian.com writes:
You wrote:

<< As strange and naive as this may sound, I've also seen a
 nebulous meteor - not really a worm meteor, but a meteor
 with a clear central condensation and a coma or an outer
 envelope of some sort. That one was a sporadic grazer 3.
 magnitude that covered some 70 degrees in 4 seconds.
 
 Clear skies!
 
 Jure A. >>

I once was puzzled about nebulous meteors. I had seen
these but has ignored them thinking that they were eye
"floaters".   Then, one day between planetarium shows
just out of curiosity I turned the sky way down to a dark
sky and all lights off, and made sure that the meteor
project was off, too, let my eyes dark adept and -- Holy
Cow!  I saw them.  About 1 every 15 minutes or so, just
about the frequency I saw them outside.  It seemed that
they were more frequent if I stood up and moved around,
then sat down and looked up.

The giveaway was that I thought I detected a hint of pink
to one over to the right.  Then I noticed that over to the
right was the red "exit" light, still on.  I turned it off.  In
fact, I then turned off all lights and sat in total darkness
and saw no "nebulous" meteors.

My conclusion is that these are reflections or refractions
of starlight or other light in floaters.  They took on, for
me, the forms reported by others: blobs or arcs.

I also have noticed when I do real observing a class of
very faint (~+6 mag) and very fast and short meteors.
Since these are often in the periphery, I tended to ignore
them because I wasn't sure.  In the Planetarium I also
see them, and also in total darkness.

My conclusion was that amorphous meteors are
related to floaters, while the very dim fast ones are
related to the eye, perhaps noise.  They aren't 
common and the latter are not noticed unless I am
in really dark skies, <5 mag.

I guess that very few people would be stupid enough
to try to observe meteors in the planetarium!  

Clear skies,
Bob Young
State Museum of Pennsylvania
Planetarium <

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