Ed- Reentering objects are responsible for only a tiny fraction of fireballs- well under 1% based on my empirical data. I think Marco has looked at this, too... he might have better numbers. In any case, while you certainly might have seen space junk, natural meteors are much more likely.
There seems to be a strong correlation between color and speed, with slow objects being seen as bright green, and faster objects seen as pale green or white. I expect that is simply because the faster objects are hotter, and the "white" blackbody output is swamping the fainter oxygen emission. Reentering space junk is slow, and is usually reported as green. Chris ***************************************** Chris L Peterson Cloudbait Observatory http://www.cloudbait.com ----- Original Message ----- From: "E.P. Grondine" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[email protected]> Sent: Thursday, December 07, 2006 9:00 AM Subject: Re: [meteorite-list] Fireball report from this morning in Utah > HI Chris - > --- Chris Peterson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > >> most of the rest see some variation of >> green, ranging from pale lime to bluish. This is >> probably caused by the 558 nm "forbidden" >> oxygen emission line, mixed to varying degrees with >> a white thermal emission. > > What is this? I remember that the first of the two > fireballs which I have seen was so green I thought it > was a re-entering war-head. > > Ed ______________________________________________ Meteorite-list mailing list [email protected] http://six.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/meteorite-list
