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Re: (meteorobs) Fireball Sighting North Houston
On 30 Oct 2000, at 22:17, Louis wrote:
> Folks, My wife and I were very fortunate Saturday evening to witness a
> fireball
> at the time (7:15) We both watched as the piece of space
> rock or
> maybe orbital debris slid slowly (about 10 degees per second) from about
> 30
> degrees up in the south, sweeping over 40 degrees of sky with a 20
> degree down
> angle. It's brightness varied somewhat as pieces broke from it and
> trailed off,
Hello Louis,
While some further information would be helpful to identify the likely
source of this event, a lot can be concluded with what you already
stated.
10°/sec is fairly slow for a meteor, but it is possible one of the slow
eclipticals. The anti-apex (radiant in Capricorn) are the earliest
evening source, with the radiant near maximum elevation after
sunset, but in this case you can rule it out because the meteors
origin lies very close to that spot. Based on the 2 path length rule,
your 40° meteor could not have come from the anti-apex. This rule
says that to associate a meteor with a radiant, the beginning point
of the meteor cannot be closer than about 2 meteor path lengths to
the radiant.
Another possibility would be a anthelion/Taurid complex. That
radiant lies in eastern Aries, so is very low in the east at 7:15pm.
So, the likelihood of seing one so early is not good. Again, you
would have to see if the 2 path length criteria holds, and of course,
verify that the trajectory did indeed come from this radiant, which is
not stated in your letter.
Of course it could also be just a random "sporadic".
But my gut feeling is it is just some space junk re-entry, because
those tend to look similar as you describe - slow with pieces falling
off.
Good luck with the Leonids!
Mike Linnolt
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