[meteorite-list] Dumb Questions About Meteors & Meteorites

[Meteorites USA]

I think it's the smoke left from the meteoroid as it cooled rapidly 
after incandescence, hence the reason for the tapering of the train. My 
theory is simple. As the meteoroid cooled (directly after incandescence) 
it produced less smoke, and therefore the train seems to taper to 
nothingness. The meteoroid is in fact still there, yet invisible to the 
camera. Also there is a certain "squiggly" nature to the trail 
suggesting an irregularly shaped object tumbling through the air. If it 
were still incandescent or in an oriented flight I would think the 
meteoroid would be flying a straighter path producing a "cleaner" trail. 
The irregular path, and tapering of the trail seems to me to suggest 
that the small thin trail is a smoke train and and not the meteoroid 
incandescence. Perhaps both?

I've been a photographer for a LONG time, and depending on the shutter 
speed of the camera at the time of exposure, it's very possible that the 
"trail" is the smoke left by the meteoroid, left over time during 
exposure. Meteors are very fast, only a few hundredths of a second in 
duration, and if the shutter speed was say 1/30 second then you're 
looking at a mush longer span of time relative to the duration of the 
meteor. Therefore I would guess that what I'm looking at is smoke train, 
and not incandescence or plasma. It could be the "blur" of the object 
itself moving across the frame during the exposure however that since 
there are distortions in the symmetry of the trail this looks more like 
smoke dissipating than the streak left by the actual meteoroid, which 
would most likely be straighter with less distortion.

Take a look at another enhanced version of the photo...Leonid Closeup: 
http://www.meteoritesusa.com/images/Leonid_Meteor-wikipedia-cc-3.jpg

If this is the continued incandescence why is the "trail" not straight? 
Was the meteoroid still "glowing" hot thereby producing a visible light 
bright enough to be picked up by the camera?

Eric




On 1/26/2010 8:13 AM, GeoZay at aol.com wrote:
>>> Take a look at this Leonid photo. As you  can see after the incandescence
>>>        
> there's a small smoke train shooting out  from the tip of the meteor. Is
> that in fact the smoke train from the  particle/meteoroid just before
> entering dark flight? Or was this just the  last bit of the meteoroid
> burning up?<<
>
> I'd say it was just the  last bit of the meteoroid burning up.  It was
> dimming and the camera caught  what little exposure it could at that point.
> GeoZay
>
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