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(meteorobs) trajectories
The Leonids are starting to burn at an altitude of
80 miles and are totally consumed in less than a second (except for the grazers)
so I dont think they break up after slowing down.
I am thinking about the situation where 4 meteors
enter a part of the sky you can cover with your fist and all four burns occur
within half a second.
A burn delay of .25 seconds reflects a separation
of 10 miles. Apparent angular separation of one degree between two meteors
at a distance of 100 miles from the observer amount to less than 2 miles. So,
while the clumping is visual the actual separation in space between 4 or 5
meteoric grains is measured in miles. Nevertheless, the clumping is real
but I lack the math or knowledge to explain this behavior.
Tom