Abstract:We present our method to calculate the meteor limiting magnitude. The limiting meteor magnitude defines the faintest magnitude at which all meteors are still detected by a given system. An accurate measurement of the limiting magnitude is important in order to calculate the meteoroid flux from a meteor shower or sporadic source. Since meteor brightness is linked to meteor mass, the limiting magnitude is needed to calculate the limiting mass of the meteor flux measurement. The mass distribution of meteoroids is… Show more
“…where N(M ref ) is the number of meteors brighter than magnitude M ref passing through area A within time interval T. If the meteors belong to a shower, they share a common velocity vector v ; the unit vector v is aligned with the meteors' velocity vector. Note that v is the meteor's motion through space, and not its apparent angular motion; the latter plays a role in determining the limiting magnitude (Molau et al 2016;Kingery & Blaauw 2017).…”
The rate at which meteors pass through Earth’s atmosphere has been measured or estimated many times over; existing flux measurements span at least 12 astronomical magnitudes, or roughly five decades in mass. Unfortunately, the common practice of scaling flux to a universal reference magnitude of +6.5 tends to collapse the magnitude or mass dimension. Furthermore, results from different observation networks can appear discrepant due solely to the use of different assumed population indices, and readers cannot resolve this discrepancy without access to magnitude data. We present an alternate choice of reference magnitude that is representative of the observed meteors and minimizes the dependence of flux on population index. We apply this choice to measurements of recent Orionid meteor shower fluxes to illustrate its usefulness for synthesizing independent flux measurements.
“…where N(M ref ) is the number of meteors brighter than magnitude M ref passing through area A within time interval T. If the meteors belong to a shower, they share a common velocity vector v ; the unit vector v is aligned with the meteors' velocity vector. Note that v is the meteor's motion through space, and not its apparent angular motion; the latter plays a role in determining the limiting magnitude (Molau et al 2016;Kingery & Blaauw 2017).…”
The rate at which meteors pass through Earth’s atmosphere has been measured or estimated many times over; existing flux measurements span at least 12 astronomical magnitudes, or roughly five decades in mass. Unfortunately, the common practice of scaling flux to a universal reference magnitude of +6.5 tends to collapse the magnitude or mass dimension. Furthermore, results from different observation networks can appear discrepant due solely to the use of different assumed population indices, and readers cannot resolve this discrepancy without access to magnitude data. We present an alternate choice of reference magnitude that is representative of the observed meteors and minimizes the dependence of flux on population index. We apply this choice to measurements of recent Orionid meteor shower fluxes to illustrate its usefulness for synthesizing independent flux measurements.
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