[meteorite-list] Very Bright Fireball Over Europe on Halloween Night

[Marco Langbroek]

Op 5-11-2015 om 2:48 schreef "Beatty, Kelly"
:
> this discussion is timely. what you've noted is exactly my understanding.
> just yesterday I came across a high-profile blog about these fireballs,

Phil Plait's?

> and
> the writer stated that most of the light comes from the superheated vaporized
> particle as it ablates. suspecting this was wrong, I looked in several places
> for the correct information -- IMO, AMS, RASC Handbook, etc -- and yet I
> didn't really find the physics spelled out explicitly. (maybe I was looking
> in the wrong places?) the closest I came was this post by Peter Jenniskens
> (http://leonid.arc.nasa.gov/meteor.html), which was equivocal.


Information on this indeed is not very consolidated but spread far and wide in 
primary literature, some dating to the '30-ies to '60-ies when Millman did a lot 
of groundbreaking spectroscopic work on meteors. More recent work on meteor 
spectra has been done by a.o. Borovicka.

Chris Peterson rightly points to the influence of human physiology on colour 
perception: as he mentions, especially under low light level conditions the 
human eye is not as perceptive for each colour. Take also into account that on 
average 1 in 4 males have a form of colour blindness. Age plays a role as well: 
deep sky observers know that young people see planetary nebula as blue, while 
older people see them more greenish: this is due to the yellowing of the cornea 
with age.

In other words: coupling meteor colours to meteor composition indeed is not as 
straight forward as some pretend.

- Marco


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Dr Marco (asteroid 183294) Langbroek
Dutch Meteor Society (DMS)

e-mail: dms at marcolangbroek.nl
http://www.dmsweb.org
http://www.marcolangbroek.nl
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