Posted on 08/19/2013 8:43:06 PM PDT by bigtoona
I just saw a fairly large green fireball through the window while talking on the phone. Moving roughly east to west and it appeared to come all the way to the ground. Anyone else see it??
I'm north of myrtle beach in a house next to the ocean...sunset beach
Criswell lives!
You’ve been down to Hurricane’s drinking that Jose Cuervo again haven’t you?
When I was a teenager me and a buddy were doing a pond fishing campout. We saw a huge green meteor that left a trail behind that glowed green for a short time. And no we weren’t drinking, smoking, snorting or injecting.
If you know this, disregard, but heat lightning is just lightning off in the distance. It’s still a thunderstorm...you just can’t hear the thunder because its so far away. It has nothing to do with heat. It gets its name because you see the flash and its usually clear where you are and hot....but where the lightning is...you can bet there is thunder and rain (unless its in the desert and its evaporating).
I was not aware of the “mechanics” the details of “heat” lightning.
The lightning continued to be visible for another two hours last night, providing quite a “show”.
Thanks.
Meteor color is determined by heat produced, not, content.
The hotter it is, the closer to blue it gets. Most meteors look white because they aren’t bright enough to activate the color sensors in your eye. Back in 1999, when the Leonids did their 33 year peak, most all that I saw were green. I have also seen Orange, Red and Blue.
Unless this was after midnight, it was probably just a sporadic hunk of rock or iron burning up.
Something passing overhead and going below the horizon directly ahead of you would appear to be traveling towards the ground.
Ah, so content has no effect on color, just heat.
Not buying that.
The one *good* one I saw, had predominantly green sparkles in the tail, but there were bluish white and white intermixed with them.
Also by tail, I mean there were two tails.
As explained to me by another Freeper, the tail straight behind it was from debris coming directly off of it, the second tail, that seemed to hang too close like a horse's tail, were objects that broke off earlier that were actually flying in formation with it and burning up as they entered the atmosphere along with the main object.
The *head* of it (main object) was an orange/white color.
If your statement was totally right, should not the color have been uniform because of the relatively close proximity of all objects at the same heat/speed?
Plus had too many chemistry classes and labs that I know one of the first things you do with an unknown sample, is to take a small drop and put it in the flame of a Bunsen burner to see what color/colors appear.
Not a perfect test, but a good start at determining further test.
The content can help determine heat, different contents burn differently and burn different colors. We learn this in middle school science lab by putting things over a Bunsen burner.
So the notable thing is this specific green fireball did not act like the other green fireballs? It's now five o'clock on the east coast, but somehow......
For what it is worth, the article in the Wikipedia does say that meteors get their color for chemistry AND/or the amount of heat.
I had always been told it was just the heat, so, I learned something new.
I normally am cautious of wikipedia articles, but, this one does have a good bibliography, so, I will say it is ok for this information.
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