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(meteorobs) Re: Meteor lenghts

Jure,

If in fact the meteor you witnessed was 70 degrees long and lasted 2.5
seconds then there is no way it could be a Virginid. The top angular
velocity for a Virginid is 18 degrees per second and your estimate
equals 28 degrees per second. Is it possible some of the data entry was
incorrect? My first thought was that your meteor could possibly be from
Centaurus but the path is a bit too far west.

Lew thoroughly answered the second question so I will leave it a that.

Clear Skies!

Bob


Jure wrote:
> 
> 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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