Photographic fireball networks

Long term radar observations of any meteor shower yield good data for a study of the features of its cross section structure in detail. The hourly rates of meteor echoes represent usually the basic data from which shower characteristics are derived. Unfortunately, the hourly rate does not depend only on the activity of the shower in question but also on the position of the shower radiant, on the mutual radiant antenna position, and on the parameters of the radar system. It is known that the knowledge of the response function of the radar is necessary for good interpretation of the hourly echo counts. A method of long term radar shower data analysis is discussed along with preliminary results

Evidence from spectra of bright fireballs

Spectral data with dispersions from 11 to 94 A/mm on 4 fireballs of actual brightness of -4 to -12 magnitude and with velocities of about 30 km/s at 70 to 80 km heights are used for studies of meteor radiation problems. The radiation of fireballs is found to be strongly affected by self absorption. But if the emission curve of growth is used for correction of the self absorption of Fe I lines, a great discrepancy between spectral data and efficiency data for total Fe I light is found. If one assumes that the self absorption is superposed on another effect, a decrease of the dimensions of the radiating volume with increasing lower potential, the spectral data on Fe I lines will be in agreement with the luminous efficiency of total Fe I meteor radiation. Formulas for emission curve of growth and Boltzmann distribution including this effect are derived. This effect is important for fireballs brighter than about -1 or -2 magnitude, while self absorption seems to be important even for fainter meteors

Atmospheric Profile Imprint in Firewall Ablation Coefficient

A general formula which expresses the distance along the meteoric fireball trajectory 1 as a function of t is discussed. Differential equations which include the motion and ablation of a single nonfragmenting meteor body are presented. The importance of the atmospheric density profile in the meteor formula is emphasized

Gross-fragmentation of meteoroids and bulk density of Geminids from photographic fireball records

The explicit solution of the drag and ablation equations of a single nonfragmenting meteoroid moving in any actual atmosphere was published several years ago. The solution yields the theoretical relation of l, the distance flown by the meteoroid in its trajectory, as a function of time, t, assuming that the height, h, is a known function of l. The photographic records of meteors and fireballs are coded by time marks, using a rotating shutter or a similar device to break the moving image. Time is, thus, the independent variable and for each time mark on a meteoroid trajector, the observed distance along the trajectory, l sub obs, as well as the double- or multiple- station photographs of the same meteoroid. Applying this solution to all available Prairie Network (PN) fireball-records, we recognized that the majority of them gave good solutions with standard deviations somewhat bigger than the intrinsic geometrical precision of the data. We also noticed that, on an average, previous methods of evaluation of the meteoroid velocities (interpolation polynomials, numerical differenciation of the observed l sub obs) used up to only several tens of percent of the intrinsic precision of the PN observational data. When residuals of these solutions, i.e. l sub obs - l sub com, were represented as a function of time for about 75 percent of solutions. The remaining 25 percent of residuals showed systematic changes with time exceeding one standard deviation. We tried to explain these systematic time course of residuals by using different meteoroids first computed theoretically and then analyzed by the same model as the natural PN fireballs were. The conclusion of these model computations is that systematic time changes of residuals in the nonfragmenting model exceeding one standard of deviation are caused by sudden gross fragmentation at one or more trajectory points. Thus, we generalized the explicit solution of the drag and ablation equations of a single nonfragmenting meteoroid by allowing for one or more points, where sudden gross fragmentation can occur. Using this generalized solution, the distances along the meteoroid trajectory can be computed for any choice of input parameters and compared with the observed distances flown by the meteoroid. For the most precise and long fireball trajectories, the least-squares solution can, thus, yield the initial velocities, the ablation coefficients, the dynamical masses, the positions of gross-fragmentation points, and the terminal mass. At a gross-fragmentation point, the ratio of the main mass to all the remaining fragments can be compared with the dynamic mass determined from our gross-fragmentation model and, thus, the meteoroid bulk density can be evaluated. We applied the gross-fragmentation model to sever PN fireballs showing time changes of residuals, and we recognized that, in all these cases, the new computed bulk densities of meteoroids resulted higher in comparison with the meteoroid densities determined with the non-gross-fragmentation model. Other aspects of the study are discussed

Considerations of conduction and radiation on the preablation heating of meteoroids

Thermal conductivity and radiation cooling of surface considerations in preablation heating of meteoroid

Fireballs and the physical theory of meteors

Fireballs and physical theory of meteor

Astronomy with Small Telescopes

The All Sky Automated Survey (ASAS) is monitoring all sky to about 14 mag with a cadence of about 1 day; it has discovered about 10^5 variable stars, most of them new. The instrument used for the survey had aperture of 7 cm. A search for planetary transits has lead to the discovery of about a dozen confirmed planets, so called 'hot Jupiters', providing the information of planetary masses and radii. Most discoveries were done with telescopes with aperture of 10 cm. We propose a search for optical transients covering all sky with a cadence of 10 - 30 minutes and the limit of 12 - 14 mag, with an instant verification of all candidate events. The search will be made with a large number of 10 cm instruments, and the verification will be done with 30 cm instruments. We also propose a system to be located at the L_1 point of the Earth - Sun system to detect 'killer asteroids'. With a limiting magnitude of about 18 mag it could detect 10 m boulders several hours prior to their impact, provide warning against Tunguska-like events, as well as to provide news about spectacular but harmless more modest impacts.Comment: 11 pages, accepted to PASP minor changes to the tex

Formation of plasma around a small meteoroid: simulation and theory

High‐power large‐aperture radars detect meteors by reflecting radio waves off dense plasma that surrounds a hypersonic meteoroid as it ablates in the Earth's atmosphere. If the plasma density profile around the meteoroid is known, the plasma's radar cross section can be used to estimate meteoroid properties such as mass, density, and composition. This paper presents head echo plasma density distributions obtained via two numerical simulations of a small ablating meteoroid and compares the results to an analytical solution found in Dimant and Oppenheim (2017a, https://doi.org/10.1002/2017JA023960, 2017b, https://doi.org/10.1002/2017JA023963). The first simulation allows ablated meteoroid particles to experience only a single collision to match an assumption in the analytical solution, while the second is a more realistic simulation by allowing multiple collisions. The simulation and analytical results exhibit similar plasma density distributions. At distances much less than λT, the average distance an ablated particle travels from the meteoroid before a collision with an atmospheric particle, the plasma density falls off as 1/R, where R is the distance from the meteoroid center. At distances substantially greater than λT, the plasma density profile has an angular dependence, falling off as 1/R^2 directly behind the meteoroid, 1/R^3 in a plane perpendicular to the meteoroid's path that contains the meteoroid center, and exp - 1.5(/λ)2/3/ in front of the meteoroid. When used for calculating meteoroid masses, this new plasma density model can give masses that are orders of magnitude different than masses calculated from a spherically symmetric Gaussian distribution, which has been used to calculate masses in the past.This work was supported by NSF grants AGS-1244842 and AGS-1056042. This work used the Extreme Science and Engineering Discovery Environment (XSEDE), which is supported by National Science Foundation grant ACI-1548562. The authors acknowledge the Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC) at The University of Texas at Austin for providing HPC resources that have contributed to the research results reported within this paper; URL: http://www.tacc.utexas.edu. Simulation-produced data are archived at TACC and available upon request. (AGS-1244842 - NSF; AGS-1056042 - NSF; ACI-1548562 - National Science Foundation)First author draf

Application of an Equilibrium Vaporization Model to the Ablation of Chondritic and Achondritic Meteoroids

We modeled equilibrium vaporization of chondritic and achondritic materials using the MAGMA code. We calculated both instantaneous and integrated element abundances of Na, Mg, Ca, Al, Fe, Si, Ti, and K in chondritic and achondritic meteors. Our results are qualitatively consistent with observations of meteor spectra.Comment: 8 pages, 4 figures; in press, Earth, Moon, and Planets, Meteoroids 2004 conference proceeding

Orbital evolution of P\v{r}\'{i}bram and Neuschwanstein

The orbital evolution of the two meteorites P\v{r}\'{i}bram and Neuschwanstein on almost identical orbits and also several thousand clones were studied in the framework of the N-body problem for 5000 years into the past. The meteorites moved on very similar orbits during the whole investigated interval. We have also searched for photographic meteors and asteroids moving on similar orbits. There were 5 meteors found in the IAU MDC database and 6 NEAs with currently similar orbits to P\v{r}\'{i}bram and Neuschwanstein. However, only one meteor 161E1 and one asteroid 2002 QG46 had a similar orbital evolution over the last 2000 years.Comment: 7 pages, 2 figures, 3 table