Hi Paul,

I carefully read your report about the argentinian display and I have two questions.

1) What do you mean by "studatas"? Is it a specific term or just another one for the more generic "shell-of-shells"?

2) In the fifth part, you report some "photo-flash". What is the difference between a photo-flash and a firefly? According to the glossary available on this website, I believed that the term "firefly" was appropriate to describe what I saw.

Fred

Studatas are, as you rightly observe, "shell of shells". However, studata is the term used in Spain and Italy and the ones fired during the display were made by IPON.

There's a big difference between photoflash and firefly. The photoflash shells used in the display looked almost like salutes, in that there was a very big and bright flash, but there was no bang - just more of a "whoomp". Firefly is a type of glitter that is very "sparkly" but the sparkles are smaller and faster than strobe stars. Strobe stars flash more slowly and tend to be brighter than fireflies, but the two terms are sometimes used interchangeably, though there is a whole variation of effects. Also, individual strobe stars flash many times during their burn. Photoflash shells emit a single flash - though, in many cases, they are effectively shell-of-shells since there may be many photoflash inserts emitted from a single shell. The photoflash-type shells were also used by Foti's in 2001 and by Luso in 2002.

Cheers,

Paul.

Hello Paul,

stutatas or studatas are not "only" shell of shells.

Those shells are normally powerfull cylindrical shells (Parente ins producing also round shells), but stutata means also that these shells having a simultaneous break.

The first break spreds the bombetts all over the sky.
The second break is the burst of ALL bombetts at the same time.

A cylindrical multi-break shell of shell is often called interreci.

Greetings,

*Stardust*