Our cameras have caught at least four space junk reentries is five years,
all of which also produced witness reports. In that time we've recorded over
1000 fireballs and 35000 bright meteors.
I've personally seen a handful of fireballs, but no space junk.
Chris
*****************************************
Chris L Peterson
Cloudbait Observatory
http://www.cloudbait.com
----- Original Message -----
From: "Matson, Robert" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "Meteorite Mailing List" <[email protected]>
Sent: Wednesday, May 17, 2006 11:55 AM
Subject: [meteorite-list] re: Mystery Surrounds Green Meteor in Australia
Hi All,
Regarding reentering manmade satellites or "space junk", Ron
replied:
It is more common than you think. For example, in the past
month, 9 pieces of space junk have reentered into Earth's
atmosphere.
Bolide events outnumber manmade debris reentries by thousands
to one. How many on this list have ever seen a satellite
reentry? I'd be surprised if the answer is more than one.
On the other hand, I think pretty much everyone has seen at
least one bolide in his/her lifetime. I've seen more than a
dozen, and despite ACTIVELY looking for satellite reentries --
which are predictable, by the way -- I've never seen one.
Ron checked for potential matches to the latest Australian
event:
There was a SL-12 debris reentry scheduled for May 15, which
may be a possibility for the meteor observed in Australia.
It's good that you checked, but in this case it was probably
overkill: the trajectory was from east to west, eliminating
all but a handful of highly retrograde objects.
--Rob
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