Dark flight
Dark flight is the last part of a meteorite's fall, after it has slowed down and stopped glowing.
A meteor glows only while it is moving fast enough to heat the air around it. Once air resistance has slowed a surviving fragment to a few kilometres per second, usually somewhere between about 15 and 30 kilometres up, it stops shining. From then on it falls unseen, in what is called dark flight, which can last a few minutes.
Dark flight is the hardest part of a fall to predict. During it, the stone drops at its terminal velocity and is pushed sideways by the wind, sometimes by several kilometres. To find meteorites, scientists combine camera records of the glowing path with wind measurements from weather balloons and computer models. In 2002 and 2003, this method helped searchers in Germany and Austria locate pieces of the Neuschwanstein meteorite, an enstatite chondrite whose fireball had been photographed by the European Fireball Network.
Because a meteorite in dark flight is cold and dark by the time it lands, nobody sees it touch down unless they are very lucky. Searchers walk carefully across the predicted area, always with the landowner's permission.
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Level: Explorer Ages 10 and up