Such calculations are useful to a first approximation, but there's no
really accurate way to know what the temperature of the parent body was.
It depends on the spin rate, the albedo, and other things that normally
are not known with any certainty.
The bottom line is that the interior temperature is probably nothing
extreme- a few tens of degrees below freezing to a few tens of degrees
above. The few seconds spent ablating in the atmosphere have a
negligible effect on the interior temperature. The few minutes spent in
dark flight have a profound effect on the temperature if the meteorite
is small, much less if it is large. Even in equatorial regions, most of
the dark flight will be through air at ~-40°C.
I would expect most meteorites to have an exterior temperature fairly
near ambient if they are picked up immediately, and probably a bit
colder than that if they are not recovered for a few minutes (since the
interior is likely to still be cold). It's worth keeping in mind that
ambient in most cases is below body temperature, and with the excellent
thermal conductivity of both stone and iron that means that they will
tend to feel cool to the touch.
AFAIK _credible_ reports of fresh falls being hot to the touch are quite
rare. But some objects can be fairly toasty before they enter, and if
they are large when they fall, or if they don't fragment until quite low
(i.e. a short period of dark flight) it isn't unreasonable they might
feel warm or hot if recovered quickly.
Chris
*****************************************
Chris L Peterson
Cloudbait Observatory
http://www.cloudbait.com
----- Original Message -----
From: "Sterling K. Webb" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "Alexander Seidel" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; "Michael Farmer"
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; <meteorite-list@meteoritecentral.com>
Sent: Saturday, July 28, 2007 9:06 PM
Subject: Re: [meteorite-list] Cali chondrite fell extremely cold!
Dear Alex, Mike, List,
Alex said:
several posts about this on the list in the past...
Mexico Doug has done more work on this than anyone
else I can think of. Go to the website http://www.diogenite.com/
and click on the item "Meteoroid" in the left-hand menu.
There is Doug's graph of the space equilibrium temperatures
for irons, ordinary condrites, and carbonaceous chondrites
for any distance from the sun...
-list
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