[meteorite-list] A Twisted Meteor Trail Over Tenerife'

[Chris Peterson]

Personally, I am highly skeptical of the handful of visual reports of 
spiraling or zig-zagging meteors. There is no acceptable physical 
explanation for such a thing. It is far more likely to be an illusion caused 
by saccadic eye movement or by an unusual light curve.

This image was a 59 second continuous exposure, and is a single frame. 
There's no way to tell how long the meteor event lasted. It is 7° long, and 
if you assume one second the numbers all work out to be pretty reasonable. 
But it could have been quite a bit shorter, or a little bit longer.

The distance can be reasonably estimated as 300-400 km, given the high 
zenith angle.

Chris

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


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Steve Dunklee" <steve.dunklee at yahoo.com>
To: <clp at alumni.caltech.edu>; <meteorite-list at meteoritecentral.com>
Sent: Friday, June 04, 2010 9:03 AM
Subject: Re: [meteorite-list] A Twisted Meteor Trail Over Tenerife'


> In my life I have viewed only two meteors that made an obvious spiral as 
> they fell. This is another case of how many licks it takes to get to the 
> center of a tootsie pop.             The photo has to be examined on a 
> pixel basis. If the CCD imager is one of the newer ones then it has a 
> frame rate of 60 per second. And there should be pixel loss between each 
> frame. The pixel loss should tell how many seconds the meteor was in the 
> captured frame. From there the effects of gravity, atmospheric drag and 
> velocity can can be plotted to give an aproximate mass. And distance 
> calculations. The G forces involved can only be guessed at without knowing 
> the actual distance or speed of the meteor.   Personally I believe this 
> meteor was traveling rather slowly as it fell and was shaped like a planer 
> board dragged behind a boat. If it had an external battery power supply it 
> would rule out most electromagnetic interference from high powered 
> electrical equipment but not
> necessarily all interference.who knows?      Steve