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Re: (meteorobs) Request for observations of transverse moving objects inLeonid meteors
I also observed transverse "orange sparks" during the 1999 Leonid shower but in
my case they were seen as I observed two dim meteors that were about to
intensify into fireball status. I posted this observation about two weeks
ago.
For the sake of this thread request I will cut and paste the 10/31 E-mail again.
Hope this is of some help:
During the 1999 Leonid shower I saw two fireballs. But I was lucky enough to
spot them before they reached fireball magnitude. For at least the first 10-15
degrees of travel the meteor was relatively dim at +3 or +4 and had a golden
sparkly appearance. It reminded me of a child's Fourth of July sparkler thrown
through the air. After this the meteor burned as a bright white fireball with
some lavender color and no "sparkles". It did leave a lasting train.
I didn't mention the sparkling earlier as I thought I was seeing things. With
this thread I decided to see if anyone else has "seen" or documented this
effect.
Thanks,
Dustin Brown
Nick Martin wrote:
> In last years (1999)Leonid meteor shower I observed an unusual visual
> feature on a very few Leonid meteors. These were objects that appeared to
> shoot out at angle of around 30 to 40 degrees from the line of the meteor.
> They were just like small orangish sparks moving outward for about 1 degree
> from near the end of the line of flight of not particularily bright meteors.
> Another observer in my group also noticed similar features. I would have
> just noted these as one of those meteor curiosities except that Prof. R.L.
> Hawkes from the University of Western Ontario contacted me via list member
> Peter Gural and asked if he could quote my observations as supporting
> evidence for some image intensified video observations made in the 1998 NASA
> Leonid Multi-Instrument Aircraft Campaign. These showed evidence of
> transverse spreading in the image of a Leonid meteor. These results were
> reported in a paper in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
> 313. L9-L13 (2000) A.G.LeBlanc et al. Evidence for transverse spread in
> Leonid meteors. (et al. is 8 other co authors)
> Abstract:- "We report here evidence for transverse spread of the light
> producing region in bright Leonid meteors. One Leonid meteor had an apparent
> spread in in the light production region of about 600metre perpendicular to
> the flight path for the meteor, that transverse spread persisting for at
> least 0.3 seconds. We have also detected short-duration jet-like features
> emanating from a bright Leonid meteor recorded in 1998. These jet like
> features have maximum spatial dimensions up to 1.9 km. While we cannot
> definitively rule out instrumental artifacts as a cause of the jet like
> features, they may be evidence of motion contributing to the observed
> spatial spread in the light production region."
>
> It would be interesting if anyone observing this years Leonids could see if
> they can observe similar features.
> Good luck with the weather.
> Nick
> Nick Martin, Bonnyton House, By Ayr, Ayrshire KA6 7EW ,Scotland, UK.
> Latitude 55 24'56" Longitude 4 26' 00".
>
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