Hi All,

Forums Meteors Pure iron meteor spectrum Hi All,

#581738
Bill Ward
Participant

Hi All,

After tweeting a re-worked spectrum it seems the meteor was captured on an all sky system (Jamie in Lochearnhead). He estimates it was -3.

I decided to re-work the spectrum as I hadn’t really paid much attention to the “thermal tail” between 550nm and 650nm. With the increased resolution I now have I’m more confident about identifying more exotic lines.

It looks like there are some weak lines from Tungsten, Vanadium and Manganese in the mix! I’m pretty sure there’ll be Nickel in the meteoroid but these tend to have their strongest emission in the deeper UV, just beyond my detection limit.

This one really was a cracker and a step forward in observation capability. There are some older observations claiming up to 70 lines in a spectrum but that was based on a spectrum that actually had 27 native lines in the image. The assumption was that the other lines were there because they had emissions at particular wavelengths and were blended together. Using that method and modern data I could claim well over 100 lines here, but I’m not sure if that is really honest science. Anyway, from my element list I count 60 native lines in this spectrum without any assumptions of blending.

cheers,

Bill.