I'm a layman but anyway did make an unsuccessful attempt to come up with a candidate using satellite orbital elements. One problem could be that there are many many thousands of artificial objects in orbit that are smaller than ten centimeters, for which no orbital data are published -- if the data exist at all. How large (and dense) does an artificial object have to be to make a decent fireball that would last 40 seconds? (I wonder how many of these very small artificial objects re-enter over what period of time....) By the way, Thomas, what was the magnitude of the fireball? Also, was it varying in brightness along its track? It seemed like it to me, but I don't have the best system for viewing a video like that. Maybe you got a very unusual meteor. Did anyone else record or see it? Ed Cannon -- Austin, Texas ----- Original Message ----- From: Thomas Ashcraft <ashcraft@heliotown.com> To: Global Meteor Observing Forum <meteorobs@meteorobs.org> Cc: Sent: Sunday, January 22, 2012 2:20 PM Subject: (meteorobs) 42 second plus long "Earth-skimmer" - a little more info I still have not been able to come up with a suitable stacked image of the full flight path for my Jan 21, 2012 "Earth-skimmer" capture. I have a partial flight path image that I merged with a sky-map now posted here: http://www.heliotown.com/Jan21_2012_Fireball.html Thomas Ashcraft - New Mexico _______________________________________________ Seesat-l mailing list http://mailman.satobs.org/mailman/listinfo/seesat-l
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