Flashes and the Duration of Firaballs

l33telboi · Post by **l33telboi** » Wed Feb 28, 2007 8:53 am

I didn't quite know where to put this so i hope it ended up in the right place. If not, then boot it to wherever it belongs.

What i'm pondering is the light flashes caused from explosives. Particularly flashes that can be seen all the way from space. Are there any guidelines for what kind of a flash would be seen from what kind of an explosive? Something one could attach to a yield?

And what about the duration of the fireball? Let's say you have an incident where there is an extremely large fireball, but it dissapears rather quickly, what should one make of such a case?

AnonymousRedShirtEnsign · Post by **AnonymousRedShirtEnsign** » Wed Feb 28, 2007 9:01 am

For the light flash, it really depends on the type of explosives used, so I don't think you can determine the yield of an explosion based on its luminous intensity without significantly more information.

I'm not very knowledgable about fireballs, like from a nuclear blast, but I would guess that it was a high power, lower energy explosion (relative to a smaller, longer lasting fireball).