[meteorite-list] Rock on the ground or not?

[Lasse Lindh]

Hi Chris

That was bad news. I hoped for a small rock out there. I calculated 3 
km, but then I used 15 km as terminal height.

Regards

Lasse



Chris Peterson skrev:
> Ah. So you're saying that you observed a stationary meteor, that 
> didn't appear to move across the sky at all? If so, that's the one 
> special case where you can accurately estimate the fall angle from a 
> single viewpoint. If the meteor's apparent altitude was +76°, then 
> that is indeed the fall angle (which is too steep to make this a 
> promising candidate for meteorite production).
>
> Being so high in the sky also lets you narrow down both the distance 
> and the speed. The long duration suggests a slow speed, and a final 
> height of 30km would be a reasonable estimate. So that would place the 
> end of the meteor around 7km away from you, on the azimuth of the 
> event. If something survived, however, it would have continued to fall 
> at a low speed for several minutes, subject to the effects of the 
> wind. Any meteorites that landed could have been in any direction from 
> the retardation point, including behind it (that is, farther away from 
> you). If you have good wind information, you can make some rough 
> estimates.
>
> My own intuition is that the combination of steep descent angle and 
> lack of terminal explosion suggests that the meteoroid simply ablated 
> away, and probably didn't produce any meteorites.
>
> Chris
>
> *****************************************
> Chris L Peterson
> Cloudbait Observatory
> http://www.cloudbait.com
>
>
> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Lasse Lindh" <3l at comhem.se>
> To: <meteorite-list at meteoritecentral.com>
> Sent: Sunday, March 30, 2008 8:34 AM
> Subject: Re: [meteorite-list] Rock on the ground or not?
>