Howdy, list I've been very busy this past week and someone may have already made this comment - apologies if so. I wanted to point out that "zig-zagging" may simply be an artifact of apparent viewing angle. I've attached a crude doodle to this email; I don't know if the listserv allows such things... Picture this - a meteorite tumbling through the atmosphere is tumbling, and traces a corkscrewing path through the sky. Hold up a corkscrew - if you look at it point-on it looks like a circle and if you look at it side-on it looks like a sine wave. If you turn it about 45 degrees or so it is sharply distorted in the vertical - it looks like a zig-zag pattern. It also looks very much like that picture of Pasamonte's ingress that was passed around.
I'm not convinced that meteorites can "zig zag" sharply across the sky - I would assume that violent maneuvers would tend to break them up. Zig-zagging is likely just an artifact of observation. I also take back my previous notion that zig-zagging likely indicates a piece of space junk - apparently anything can appear to zigzag if you look at it from the right angle. Again; my apologies if everyone has gone over this already - I had to trash a lot of messages this week without reading them. Cheers, MDF -- Marc D. Fries, Ph.D. Postdoctoral Research Associate Carnegie Institution of Washington Geophysical Laboratory 5251 Broad Branch Rd. NW Washington, DC 20015 PH: 202 478 7970 FAX: 202 478 8901
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