Having seen the Mir reentry video on CNN last night, it becomes apparent that the debris passed across the entire field of view in about 15 seconds (I didn't actually time it yet), MUCH faster than a typical "fast satellite" pass. I have seen a fireball which took 4 - 6 seconds to cover half of the visible sky, and was told by many people that it "was too fast for a satellite reentry". I guess when reeaally big pieces such as Mir get down below 60 km altitude they are still going several km/sec and would be VERY similar in appearance (transit speed-wise) to a smaller, higher, and much faster meteors. I guess now the only way to tell a natural fireball from a man-made one will be a careful scrutiny of the possible reentry candidates for the location and time and direction, but to me it will no longer be possible to dismiss all "fast fireball" reports as natural phenomenon. -- Tom Troszak, Asheville, NC, USA 35.601 N, -82.554 W mailto:tom@bullhammer.com ----------------------------------------------------------------- Unsubscribe from SeeSat-L by sending a message with 'unsubscribe' in the SUBJECT to SeeSat-L-request@lists.satellite.eu.org http://www2.satellite.eu.org/seesat/seesatindex.html
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Fri Mar 23 2001 - 06:37:34 PST