A fireball in Jupiter's atmosphere

Abstract

One fireball was photographed during two encounters with Jupiter. Its total luminosity was 1.2 × 105 0 mag s (at standard range 100 km). If we employ the luminous efficiency proposed by Cook et al. (1981) for slip flow of a meteoroid in its own vapors we obtain an estimated mass of 11 kg. A rough absolute magnitude is −12.5. If we note that we searched for a total of 223 s during two exposures, we estimate a number density near Jupiter of 7 × 10−28 cm−3 for masses of meteoroids of 3 kg and greater. This value is about a factor of 6 smaller than a rough upper limit reached from an extrapolation from terrestrial observations of meteors and comets.