Light curves of very faint meteors

Other

Scientific paper

Rate now

  [ 0.00 ] – not rated yet Voters 0   Comments 0

Details

8

Scientific paper

THE variation of brightness as a function of height when a meteoroid burns up (ablates) in the Earth's atmosphere is governed by the physical properties of the meteoroid. The basic theory of the ablation of a solid meteoroid to due to Öpik1, and the theoretical light curves are in fairly good agreement with the observed light-curves of very bright meteors2. In contrast to this the observations of Jacchia3 and Hawkins and Southworth4 of faint photographic meteors show that the train lengths of these meteors are much shorter than predicted by the classical theory, and it is principally due to evidence of this sort that the ``dustball'' theory of Whipple5 which supposes the original meteoroid to consist of an aggregate of many small solid particles, has become very popular. Nevertheless Jones and Kaiser6 found that by extending the classical ablation theory to include the effects of the meteoroid's thermal capacity, conduction and radiation they could explain many features of the experimental data in terms of compact meteoroids which fragment as a result of thermal shock. According to Jones and Kaiser6 it is possible to choose between the two theories on the basis of observations of very faint meteors (magnitude M > + 3) since these meteoroids should not fragment due to thermal shock if they are compact; on the other hand if they are fragile conglomerates they will probably continue to show the effects of severe disintegration.

No associations

LandOfFree

Say what you really think

Search LandOfFree.com for scientists and scientific papers. Rate them and share your experience with other people.

Rating

Light curves of very faint meteors does not yet have a rating. At this time, there are no reviews or comments for this scientific paper.

If you have personal experience with Light curves of very faint meteors, we encourage you to share that experience with our LandOfFree.com community. Your opinion is very important and Light curves of very faint meteors will most certainly appreciate the feedback.

Rate now

     

Profile ID: LFWR-SCP-O-1799283

  Search
All data on this website is collected from public sources. Our data reflects the most accurate information available at the time of publication.