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(meteorobs) Meteor lenghts
Hi all!
Here I go again, bringing up the old beaten and battered topic of
meteor lenghts. Well...
...on Feb 7/8 Jure Z. and I saw a sporadic grazer, 0 mag, 70 degrees
long, about 2.5 seconds in duration. It started in Leo and shot all the
way to Polaris and a bit further down. Anyway, when Javor did some
analysis with VisDat and Radiant, he got weird result - the grazer was
probably a Virginid?!?!? Is this possible?
I gave it some thought and here is what I came up with - another
question. Is there really a thing such as 'the right distance from the
radiant meteor'? The common rule is that the meteor shouldn't be longer
than half the distance between its end point and the radiant.
What if there was a fireball that penetrated to 30 km altitude. It would
start burning at the 'standard' altitude of 110 to 80 km. So its path
would be around 70km long. Now take a meteoroid that produces a 0 mag
meteor on the exact same path. The meteor will be shorter, probably some
20 - 30 km (?). And take another meteoroid, one that produces a +5 mag
meteor again on the exact same path. This one will burn up even faster
and thus its path will be shorter - 10 km ?
Anyway, what I'm trying to say si - which one of these meteors is the
'roght lenght'?
Clear skies!
Jure A.
P.S. - it's quite possible that this is a stupid question due to a
possible lack of knowledge on meteors...
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