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 ----- Dr Marco (asteroid 183294) Langbroek Dutch Meteor Society (DMS) e-mail: d...@marcolangbroek.nl http://www.dmsweb.org http://www.marcolangbroek.nl ----- ______________________________________________ Visit our Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/meteoritecentral and the Archives at http://www.meteorite-list-archives.com Meteorite-list mailing list Meteorite-list@meteoritecentral.com https://pairlist3.pair.net/mailman/listinfo/meteorite-list
