Meteor - Leonid Meteor Shower - Early Morning 17 Nov 98

  Astrophotography details:

Film PJM-2 Ektapress Multispeed 640
Telescope/camera 50 mm Canon AE-1 mounted piggyback on Meade LX-200 10"
F-ratio f/1.8
Exposure time 5 Minutes
AutoGuider Unguided
Autoguider exposure time N/A
guide star N/A
Date of Photo Approximately 0300 local, 17 November 98
Location Florence Junction Site
Scanner HP PHOTOSMART SCANNER
Additional image processing  Brightness, contrast, cropping
Posted  20 November 98 - Corrected date 21 Nov 98 (I was off 1 day!) 

Bright star near top of photo is SAO61414 (Magnitude 3.3).  The meteor passes between two relatively bright stars.  The reddish one above the meteor track is SAO61306 (Magnitude 6.07) and the one below is SAO80650 (Magnitude 5.42).  The image area shown is about 15 Degrees wide by 10 Degrees high.  The meteor track is about 4 Degrees long and is in the constellation Cancer.  North is approximately up.  Megastar was used to determine the region of the sky, to identify the stars mentioned above and to determine the length of the meteor track.

I'm still partial to the notion that the color change from green to red is because the meteor is a nickel-iron meteor, the nickel vaporizes with the characteristic green spectral lines of nickel first due to nickel's lower boiling point, then the iron vaporizes and glows with the characteristic red spectral lines of iron.