From: jeffp@netcom.com (Jeff Papineau)
Subject: Re: July 4, 1992 - Global Spiritual Independence Day
Date: Mon, 14 Sep 92 22:12:41 GMT
Organization: Netcom - Online Communication Services  (408 241-9760 guest) 

In article <!ptnqmn@lynx.unm.edu> cary@carina.unm.edu (Ithlial the Archer) writes:
>In article <1992Sep9.170823.13966@ryn.mro4.dec.com> randolph@est.enet.dec.com (Tom Randolph) writes:
>>
>>First of all, CHILL OUT, will ya?                 
>
>Ok, I did get a little out of hand there, sorry.
>>
>>And third, this has nothing at all to do with physics. Obviously gravity and
>>drag will pull a meteor towards the Earth some, and in many cases they'll
>>be drawn right into the Earth - so what? The point is that meteor paths look
>>straight from the ground. John Winston said they don't. He was wrong.
>>Wanna see some meteor photos that prove it? Go ahead, show me a photo of a
>>curved meteor path. Bet you have trouble finding one.
>>-Tom R.   randolph@est.enet.dec.com
>
>I have seen meteors follow curved paths in the sky,  I have not been so
>fortunate as to photograph it.  It's probably impossible to do since
>in my experience the meteor has to be visible for relatively long time,
>and therefore a long path, requiring a very wide angle lense, wider
>than most available I would suspect.
>
>
>Ithlial
>
>My opinions, mine, mine, mine!
>
>To me, boxing is like ballet, except there's no music, no choreography,
>and the dancers hit eachother.
>
>
>

My new hobby is astronomy, since it gets me out into the night air, in low-
light polluted skys. I saw several meteors last week in AZ when I was
out camping with my C8. Yes, they can curve slightly.

my best friend has a brother who is an astrophysicist at the big array
in NM (you know, the one on 2010) and he agrees with my friend that they
do curve, although not ALWAYS perceptably by the unaided eye.

In fact, by coincidence, we were just speaking of it last night (unrealted
to any posts here; I just read them!) and he was saying a couple of things
I will repeat here:

1) That most people live in cities, and as such, have very limited awareness
of the stars,  astronomical issues, and never see unpolluted skys.

2) That it took watching persaides in order for him to grasp that the earth 
both rotates and orbits the sun, because of the multipule curvature that a
meteor  CAN demonstrate when it hits our atmousphere.



3) Since most people live in cities, don't look at the sky at night, have
very limited knowledge of constelations, etc. they would be prone to 

a) not seeing anonmylous lights in the sky, even if they were there regularly.
b) would 
not know what they were looking at, even if they did happen to see something, such
that many UFO's are Venus, bright twinkling starts coming up over the horizon,
and bright stars/planets/comets that due to auto-kinesis, appear to dance about,
but are actually stationary, with or without intermitent light transmitions (stars and pulsars, etc.)

Of course the above does not mean that people can't be contacted/abducted
or see saucers up close, but much that people believe to be UFO's are certainly
astronomical objects well understood.

Jeff-

Xref: sparky talk.religion.newage:4288 sci.skeptic:16168