Spaceborne ultraviolet 251-384 nm spectroscopy of a meteor during the 1997 Leonid shower

Details Spaceborne ultraviolet 251-384 nm spectroscopy of a meteor during the 1997 Leonid shower Spaceborne ultraviolet 251-384 nm spectroscopy of a meteor during the 1997 Leonid shower

Aug 2002

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2002m%26ps...37.1071j&link_type=abstract

Meteoritics & Planetary Science, vol. 37, no. 8, pp. 1071-1078 (2002)

Physics

11

Scientific paper

We used the ultraviolet to visible spectrometers onboard the midcourse space experiment to obtain the first ultraviolet spectral measurements of a bright meteor during the 1997 Leonid shower. The meteor was most likely a Leonid with a brightness of about -2 magnitude at 100 km altitude. In the region between 251 and 310 nm, the two strongest emission lines are from neutral and ionized magnesium. Ionized Ca lines, indicative of a hot T ?10 000 K plasma, are not detected. The Mg and Mg + line intensity ratio alone does not yield the ionization temperature, which can be determined only by assuming the electron density. A typical air plasma temperature of T = 4400 K would imply a very high electron density: ne = 2.2 x 10-18 m-3 , but at chondritic abundances of Fe/Mg and Si/Mg ~ 1. For a more reasonable local-thermodynamic-equilibrium (LTE) air plasma electron density, the Mg and Mg + line ratio implies a less than chondritic Fe/Mg = 0.06 abundance ratio and a cool non-LTE T = 2830 K ionization temperature for the ablation vapor plasma. The present observations do not permit a choice between these alternatives. The new data provide also the first spectral confirmation of the presence of molecular OH and NO emission in meteor spectra.

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