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D.O. ReVelle (Los Alamos National Laboratory), P.G. Brown (University of Western Ontario)
We have analyzed in detail the ablation behavior and observed characteristics of three recent fireball events which produced documented meteorite recoveries and which had pre-atmospheric orbits measured. These three events, the Tagish Lake , Moravka and Neuschwanstein meteorite falls had their accompanying fireballs documented in detail, including infrasonic, seismic, video/photographic data and satellite observations in addition to recovered meteorites. Using these data for each event and the well constrained atmospheric trajectories for each bolide we apply a new ablation model explicitly including porosity of the original bodies to constrain the physical properties of the original meteoroids. We compare observed characteristics of each event, particularly acoustic data such as the observed acoustic period at maximum amplitude, with predictions from the model. The model includes a full cylindrical blast-wave treatment and a means to generate a simulated light curve for comparison with ground-based and space-based sensors. We will provide model estimate of the pre-atmospheric mass, porosity and tensile strength for each of the precursor meteoroids based on observed flight data and probable ranges for acoustic and optical efficiencies for each event.
The author(s) of this abstract have provided an email address for comments about the abstract: revelle@lanl.gov
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Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, 35 #4
© 2003. The American Astronomical Soceity.