From: Amara Graps (Amara.Graps@mpi-hd.mpg.de)
Date: Tue Nov 20 2001 - 09:51:02 MST
These Leonids photographs by Tony Hallas took my breathe away ...!
http://www.astrophoto.com/meteor.htm
Notice that the brighter meteors change color from green to orange to
magenta.
[The colors can be seen a little bit better here:
http://www.psiaz.com/polakis/leonids2001/leonids2001.html
in particular the fourth picture.]
Why? The best guess answer from our dust group in our meeting this
morning is that the largest particles are 'probing' different layers
of the Earth's atmosphere. The ionized trail of green would be due to
oxygen, for example, and then the color changes as the particles move
deeper. (These are the same colors you see in the aurora.)
Amara
--
************************************************************************
Amara Graps, PhD | Max-Planck-Institut fuer Kernphysik
Heidelberg Cosmic Dust Group | Saupfercheckweg 1
+49-6221-516-543 | 69117 Heidelberg, GERMANY
Amara.Graps@mpi-hd.mpg.de * http://www.mpi-hd.mpg.de/dustgroup/~graps
************************************************************************
"Never fight an inanimate object." - P. J. O'Rourke
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Sat Nov 02 2002 - 08:12:03 MST