trail-free meteor?

"Steve Campbell"
First, it never made the ground, it vanished when still several degrees
above the horizon. Secondly, as well as the burning up of the object the
trail of a meteor is also made up of atmospheric gas that has been ionised
by the violence of the object's passage.

Actually, just because a meteor is no longer visible does not mean it
has not carried on. When a major fireball enters the atmosphere its
velocity is retarded to a point where ablation stops. This can occur when
the meteoroid is slowed to around 2 to 5 km/second. When ablation stops the
meteoroid is no longer visible but it has entered the so called "dark"
portion of the flight path. This can occur at any altitude below 30 kms but
it is more often in the 10-15 km height range. The lowest altitude for a
photographically recorded fireball is 13 kms according to Dr. Jiri Borovicka
of Ondrejov Observatory. This refers to large fireball meteoroids not the
more normal bright cometary meteors observed mostly during annual meteor
showers like the Perseids, Geminids or Leonids etc. These are high velocity
meteors and they burn up high in the atmosphere with no chance of reaching
the ground as a meteorite.

Ed Majden
EMO Sandia Bolide Detection Station
Courtenay, B.C. Canada

Steve Campbell wrote in message ...
Jim Greenfield wrote:

I hope that you could estimate its impact point- what if it was a lump
of gold?
Trails are the burning up of the meteor, but if it were inert??
Chemical compound most prevelent (IIRC) is nickel, but why not another
heavy element?
Compare positions of gold fields, add in geological history (formation
of mountains, erosion, continental drift etc)- and see if the pattern
in some cases doesn't hint at the gold being of meteoric
origin...........
welllllll, two things really.
First, it never made the ground, it vanished when still several degrees
above the horizon. Secondly, as well as the burning up of the object the
trail of a meteor is also made up of atmospheric gas that has been ionised
by the violence of the object's passage.

Well if the trail is (partly) our atmosphere glowing, I guess there
goes the pot of gold (sigh). Are you sure that the meteor wasn't
obscured by a rainbow?

Jim G

Jim Greenfield wrote:


Well if the trail is (partly) our atmosphere glowing, I guess there
goes the pot of gold (sigh). Are you sure that the meteor wasn't
obscured by a rainbow?
'Fraid so and even though I'm in ireland.....there was no little chap playin
a fiddle around either