Hi Jim-
As a rule, you can't tell much about a meteor's composition from the
visual colors observed. The eye is a lousy spectrometer!
The optical output of a meteor consists of hundreds of component
emission lines, possibly a blackbody component in some cases, and some
strong atmospheric emission lines. The visual effect is something close
to white, sometimes with a color cast provided mainly by atmospheric
ionization. While there are a handful of strong emission lines commonly
observed in spectra, these are very narrow and therefore represent only
a small part of the total luminous energy, which means they don't have
much effect on the color ("color" being a physiological phenomenon, not
a physical one).
This isn't to say there might not be some cases where meteoroid
composition is reflected in the color, but you can't make any
generalizations.
Chris
*******************************
Chris L Peterson
Cloudbait Observatory
http://www.cloudbait.com
On 9/9/2013 10:38 PM, James Masny wrote:
Good evening list. Sorry if this has been discussed before, but are
different colors of meteors streaking through the atmosphere
indicative of certain minerals burning up? And what color represents
what minerals? I remember the 2001 Leonids, and seeing so many
different colors - pink, blue, white, yellow, green, orange. The
other night, I was outside, and I caught 2 fireballs, 1 changed color
from yellow to red, another from white to yellow.
All the best
Jim
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