Good question Mark. It may be splitting hairs, but there is a distinction that can be drawn here between a "fall" and a "witnessed fall" - one is usually considered synonymous with the other, but in my mind a "witnessed fall" implies a human observer witnessed part of the fall - either the bolide or the impact or both.
Meteors/meteorites that are imaged with satellites or captured with radar should be considered "falls", but I wouldn't apply the term "witnessed fall" to them. As a collector, I am being arbitrary, but I draw a distinction between falls witnessed by human eyes and falls imaged or tracked by technology alone. Ideally, a fall should be seen by human observers and radar or satellite - like Tagish Lake. Best regards, MikeG On 4/25/09, Mark Crawford <[email protected]> wrote: > I read a definition of a fall as being where the meteor is 'usually seen > as a fireball' before it lands and is recovered. Obviously, I thought, > it needs to be seen burning up - that's the very definition of a fall. > > I then considered that the definition would strictly be 'observed' to > fall. One could imagine a scenario where an object may not be witnessed > by the human eye, but which were otherwise recorded. *Pribram and > *Innisfree were recorded photographically; Pribram and (I think) > Innisfree were also witnessed by eye, but if they hadn't been I'd still > call them falls. > > Then I wondered about 2008 TC3. It was observed and projected to impact > earth, the landing area was calculated. Material was recovered. Now if > the KLM pilot hadn't seen the fireball, and if the putative Meteosat > image (*http://tinyurl.com/d4sna5) *hadn't appeared - would this still > be classed as a fall? > > When is a fall not a fall? :) > > Mark > ** > > -- > Mark's Meteorite Pages: http://meteorites.cc > > ______________________________________________ > http://www.meteoritecentral.com > Meteorite-list mailing list > [email protected] > http://six.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/meteorite-list > -- ......................................................... Michael Gilmer (Louisiana, USA) Member of the Meteoritical Society. Member of the Bayou Region Stargazers Network. Websites - http://www.galactic-stone.com and http://www.glassthrower.com .......................................................... ______________________________________________ http://www.meteoritecentral.com Meteorite-list mailing list [email protected] http://six.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/meteorite-list
