[meteorite-list] Re: Entry Burn [was Lunar Burn]

[Chris Peterson]

There are only a limited number of meteor spectra, so the colors aren't 
real well understood, but I'd be surprised if you saw the nickel 
emission over the atmospheric oxygen. The majority of slow, bright 
meteors are reported as green by many witnesses, but only a small 
fraction of those contain significant nickel.

Chris

*****************************************
Chris L Peterson
Cloudbait Observatory
http://www.cloudbait.com


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "E.P. Grondine" <epgrondine at yahoo.com>
To: <meteorite-list at meteoritecentral.com>
Sent: Tuesday, August 22, 2006 11:14 PM
Subject: [meteorite-list] Re: Entry Burn [was Lunar Burn]


Hi Chris, list

I have seen two entrie.  I believe I posted the first
one to the list, and it was green - at the time I was
in Virgina, and the entry was so green I first thought
that it either had to be

a)an accidental launch warhead entry
(which I stopped thinking when nothing exploded), or
b) a piece of space junk.

But it was neither, if I remember the news reports
from the time - no space junk announcement from NORAD,
and press pieces (as always, of dubious reliability)
that it was a meteorite.

The second entry I saw about early December, 2003.  It
should have been over Ohio, I was driving west thtough
the Winchester Gap.  No green tinge at all on this
one, just big.

I like Elton's observation that it is probably the
nickel.  This agrees well with the recently observed
entries of small pieces of SW3.

good hunting,
Ed