Posted on 01/07/2005 1:27:02 PM PST by sonofatpatcher2
Corkscrew Meteor Mystery
While photographing the recently discovered comet Machholz the other night, Jimmy Westlake's mind wandered back to a mystery that'd been bugging him for years. On Jan. 1, 1986, he was photographing another comet, Halley's, through his homemade 8-inch reflecting telescope.
"About one minute into the exposure, I watched a meteor zip through the field of the telescope," said Westlake, a professor of physical sciences at Colorado Mountain College in Steamboat Springs, CO. "I stopped the exposure at two minutes."
That night, when he developed the roll of slide film, he was astounded at what he saw:
"Crossing the tail of Halley's comet was a corkscrew meteor trail with no fewer than 25 twists in it," he said. "I had read of some meteors appearing to have curves or kinks in their trails, but I had never seen a photo of one."
It's the picture above, and Halley's comet is the smudge under the corkscrew.
Years later Westlake ran across an old astronomy book by Camille Flammarion and happened upon a sketch someone had made of a daytime fireball trail that looked almost exactly like his corkscrew meteor, "including the dark-colored inner curls," he said.
Westlake's photo was never published until today. He wonders if there are others out there.
(Excerpt) Read more at space.com ...
Here's the image. What he's probably looking at is a large piece of space junk -- rocket upper stage, probably, or perhaps a dead LEO satellite, burning in.
The "corkscrew" pattern would be caused by the tumbling of the body.
Off-topic, I saw a beautiful fireball last night -- really big and bright.
Suppose a meteorite is a composite of two different materials; one glows much brighter at a given temperature.
If such an object is spinning twoards the Earth, would it not look like such a corkscrew?
Need to get the Stargate Command Team to check it out.
25 seconds.
Or maybe the beginning of Lucifer's Hammer... though I recall the world came out better from the alien invasion.
That was me the night I mixed a bottle of Three Roses with a bottle of Pept-Bismol......
That was a good book......1978?
I think 77. Just re-read it, and it's not that dated. Other than a complete lack of computers, which you don't notice, and a few... archaic attitudes, the most startling thing was a statement that "the US space program has never lost a man in space".
I thought astronomers noticed a twisting in the rings of Saturn and tracked it to their big ship. Or maybe I'm thinking Clark's Rama. It's been a while.
"though I recall the world came out better from the alien invasion. "
Yeah, giant ice cream sundays from space pack a wallop.
It was the comet-watching bit that reminded me of Lucifer's Hammer. I think you're right about Footfall - at least, they noticed something weird while looking at Saturn. The twisty rings may have been natural?
Still a true statement today.
We did however lose one crew before they could get there,
and one after they'd returned.
None died "in space."
I believe the quote said "space duty", actually, which would cover Challenger and Columbia, sadly.
I think the point was that we'd lost the Apollo 1 test crew, but that was on the ground and not part of a space launch/mission.
Yeah, at least we know the names and faces of the men and women who died for our space program. Has anyone ever figured out how many the Soviets lost? I'm betting it's more than 18.
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