Peculiarities of the way in which cosmic bodies which form bolides interact with the atmosphere, and their mass scale

The basic equations of meteor theory as it applies to bolides are reformulated on the basis of the analysis and assumptions of Biberman et al. (1979) and applied to sample data from the Prairie network (McCrosky et al., 1978 and 1979). The assumptions involved in the model include LTE in the shock layer and neglect of viscosity and thermal-conductivity effects and line absorption. An expression for the initial mass of the bolide-forming object is derived which is independent of the effective radiation coefficient, and the numerical results are found to agree with the mass scale developed by Ceplecha (1975) for the Prairie bolides for velocities up to 20 km/s but not at higher velocities. It is also shown that the bodies break up in the solid phase, as suggested by Kalenichenko (1982).