The Corkscrew Meteor

startleman writes "Over on Space.com is an interesting image of a corkscrew meteor. 'On Jan. 1, 1986, [Jimmy Westlake] was photographing [Halley's comet] through his homemade 8-inch reflecting telescope..."About one minute into the exposure, I watched a meteor zip through the field of the telescope." When he developed the roll of slide film, he was astounded that '...Crossing the tail of Halley's comet was a corkscrew meteor trail with no fewer than 25 twists in it.' Westlake's photo was never published until today. He wonders if there are others out there."

Comments

Hmm

[PrvtBurrito]

Although I have never seen it in a photograph, couldn't this have been caused by visual waves caused by the atmosphere? Anyone who has looked through a telescope in (crappy) skies knows that objects appear to oscillate rapidly. I don't doubt that a meteor could travel in such a way as to pick up on this. The reason the stars don't appear in this way is because they are fixed objects in a time lapse photo and are averages of all the waves. -Sean

Re:Hmm

[Some guy named Chris]

The meteor appears about 1 minute into the exposure, but it doesn't take 1 minute for the meteor to cross the field of exposure, which is what you are implying by your "half a hertz" oscillation theory.

Now, the motors could have had a 60 hertz "hum" and the meteor was in the frame for just under half a second. That cycle rate is common for AC in North America, and I can belive a meteor streaking across the sky in half a second more than I can believe it streaked across the sky in a whole minute.

Re:Hmm

[Almost-Retired]

With all due respect to all the theories being tossed otu as 'obvious facts', but which given the time frame cannot be, let me throw out another theory that fits the evidence a lot better than gearing errors in the scope mount or wind induced vibrations, considering that the meteor probably went across the field of view in 3 seconds or less.

How about if the meteor itself was spinning? Would this not tend to create the effect shown? These things are not always made out of uniform material, and aren't often nice and convieniently round.

Given the time frame of the observation, its the only thing that makes any sense to me.

--
Cheers, Gene

Re:Just a guess, but yes there's more.

[JabberWokky]

Um... I think you misread.

The question is: Are there more photos of this out there?

--
Evan "And I believe the assumption is 'taken by humans', just in case you leap to assumptions again"