3D Leonid Meteor 2000/2001

November 17, 2000 the NCAS decided to try and calculate how high a meteor is when it 'streaks' across the sky.

So a group of us got together and descended on the Pawnee Prairie Grasslands Dark Skies, while Jan & Dave stayed in Ft. Collins,
during the Leonid meteor shower.                                                                                                                  .        .            .                     .
.    .        .                   .                                   .. 
 

Earth's path through space is shown in blue. Auburn-colored ellipses denote dust streams laid down by comet Tempel-Tuttle
in the indicated years. Until they disperse after a few centuries, these narrow trails are regions that have a high density of
meteoroids and so there is a meteor storm if the Earth passes through one. This year our planet will pass close to trails deposited
in 1932, 1733 and 1866. In 2001, Earth will move more directly through streams from 1767, 1699 and 1866.
 
 
 
 

This plot is courtesy of Dr. David Asher (copyright 2000, all rights reserved)
Attendees were:

                Ft. Collins- Cactus Flats 2000 Event
Harold Porter: Who calculated where to point in the sky at 10 minute intervals and I will include them,visited sites.
Dave Chamness- imager Ft. Collins.
Jan Kok- imager Ft.Collins.

           Sterling Area 2001 Event
Terry Moore - handled the ham radio & kept Ray alert.
Ray Warren- provided the cameras used by himself for the southern images & Phil OKunewick(north).
Phil OKunewick- north image of exploding bolide set, did much of the coordination on Terry & imagery.
Tom Teters - setup at Cactus flats South I shot two rolls of film, got great resolution and NO meteors.

Each of us was about a mile and a half apart. on an approximately east/west line.
And while Jan at least got other meteor streaks in his imagery, .....................

******************************************************************************************************
There was only 1 set of images, from 2000 that had the same meteor in them at the same time.

               Dave Chamness and  Jan Kok took the 'winning shots of the same meteor.
THE WINNERS !!

                                      Taken from:                      40.642265, -105.091354                         :  Approx;: 40.656892, -105.091530         (1 mile north)
Can you cross your eyes and 'match' these images, try moving your head to & fro at the same time.





                  This image directly overlays the starfield, so the angular seperation of the two exspoures can be calculated.
                                     
 

                                                                                                    Here's another 3D image for you
                                     
 

         Now to 2001 Bolide burst in Leo taken byTerry & Phil

   'Here is Terry Moore's page, with original scans of the exploding bolide . Some of Terry's narative:

   This is a rather bright meteor in Leo, Nov. 17, 2001, @ about 2-3AM local time.
It was only caught in its entirety on the Ray's southern camera.
This was intended to be a 5 minute exposure, but once this meteor appeared, we closed the shutters.
HAM radio was used between the cameras to point the cameras and syncronize the shutters.

 Unfortunately, we missed!   Though we coordinated over HAM radio, one of the cameras was pointed
slightly differently than the other.  The cameras were both Ray Warren's.  We positioned ourselves about
4 miles apart. We have some other pictures that are closer, but nothing beats that fireball.  Phil OKunewick
did much of the coordination.  Phil was at the North site with a few others.  Ray and I were by ourselves.
Never seen meteors like that.
 I'm hoping you can pick a detail from both pictures that might pinpoint it in space at two points.  We have
the beginning of the track, which is kinda fuzzy. Then it changes colors in a distinct way from green to orange.
Then the red halo on the sides blends to the main stream.   All of those are identifiable in both pictures.
   What is interesting is that it burned VERY brightly, by far the brightest one of the night, and then left a tiny
red trail sticking out the front as it finally vaporized the last few bits.  The end of that tail is pretty distinct.
And, more importantly, it occurs in several of the various imagery you have on your site.  So we could actually
confirm from that where it was at.
   The thing that made me think that was a comparison of the speed of our observed image.  The bolides to the
north and south would streak across the sky very quickly.  But this one was almost like slow motion.  I think that
is because of the foreshortening of the path caused by my viewpoint.
   For the planetarium, we will need at least two points along the path so we can get a beginning and ending
location in space.  Then we can put time to it in a series of frames and develop a simulation that might look rather
real in the dome.
Note: I can get pretty close to the coordinates.  I have them written down somewhere.  If I can't find them,
I think I may still have the Colorado Gazetteer  where I marked our positions that night. Combined with the
better ones that have been posted, we could possible triangulate an entire path during the burn up.'
   - Terry -
*******************************************************************************************************************                 RECALCULATING
   South Camera     40* 41'   13.72" N    102* 48' 23.70" W   (1.67 miles east of Fleming, 21 miles east of Sterling)
   North Camera     40* 44' 01.03" N    102* 48' 23.31"  W   (Seperation is 3.207244 miles, 16,934.25' @ 0.03* E of N.)

                      North - Phil's Image                              South - Ray's Image

 Author's note: I added the bottom part of the left image for purely cosmetic reasons.

                      Method of Calcuating Seperation of Meteor Trains

Let's measure the distances in Photoshop & use the Pythagorean formulae.
By identifiying a star in Leo next to Chertan, called SAO 99508, a 9.2 mag. G0 star  and
overlaying the Images at the metor train we come up with these distance:

The distance between the meteor trails is:  43.6 pixels
The distance between Regulus & Chertan is: 440.6 pixels, 16* 21'41" or 58,901 arc"
Hence: 133.68 arc" = 1 pixel

Now a little Trig.
The distance between the meteor trails is: 1* 37' 08.6"  (1/2= 0* 48' 34.3")
The distance between the photographers was 16,934.25 feet (1/2=1.6036 miles) 01/17/11

  Math to calculate height

                                  Further Questions to be answered

 Query:

Phil O: Suggested that the height of the meteors can also be estimated by the color of the meteor 'train',
since the air is ionized by the meteor, the color is a direct representation of the elements it is ionizing.
In this set, the colors go from green to red
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Page     Page under construction: Sorry for being a bit late Jan. 05, 2011 ..TjT   Re-editted 01/17/11.
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Tempus Sans ITC