Optical meteor fluxes and application to the 2015 Perseids

Blaauw, R.; Campbell-Brown, M.; Kingery, Aaron

doi:10.1093/mnras/stw1979

Cited by 14 publications

(9 citation statements)

References 15 publications

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“…We find that this approach is equivalent to the method of Blaauw et al (2016) who take the mode of the fitted Gumbel distribution as the effective limiting magnitude. We suggest that estimating the limiting meteor magnitude directly from meteor data is preferable to estimating it using stellar limiting magnitude and then applying angular velocity corrections, as our approach naturally includes all observational/instrumental biases.…”

Section: Description Of the New Methodsmentioning

confidence: 98%

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A new method for measuring the meteor mass index: application to the 2018 Draconid meteor shower outburst

Vida

Campbell-Brown

Brown

et al. 2020

A&A

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Context. Several authors predicted an outburst of the Draconid meteor shower in 2018, but with an uncertain level of activity. Aims. Optical meteor observations were used to derive the population and mass indices, flux, and radiant positions of Draconid meteors. Methods. 90 minutes of multi-station observations after the predicted peak of activity were performed using highly sensitive Electron Multiplying Charge Coupled Device (EMCCD) cameras. The data calibration is discussed in detail. A novel maximum likelihood estimation method of computing the population and mass index with robust error estimation was developed. We apply the method to observed Draconids and use the values to derive the flux. Meteor trajectories are computed and compared to predicted radiant positions from meteoroid ejection models. Results. We found that the mass index was 1.74 ± 0.18 in the 30 minute bin after the predicted peak, and 2.32 ± 0.27 in the next 60 minutes. The location and the dispersion of the radiant matches well to modeled values, but there is an offset of 0.4°in solar longitude.

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Section: Description Of the New Methodsmentioning

confidence: 98%

“…First, we tried to fit a Gumbel distribution to the mass distribution following Blaauw et al (2016), but we found that it always produced fits with smaller p-values than the gamma distribution, under the null hypothesis the data and model distributions are identical.…”

Section: Description Of the New Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

A new method for measuring the meteor mass index: application to the 2018 Draconid meteor shower outburst

Vida

Campbell-Brown

Brown

et al. 2020

A&A

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“…To estimate the flux, the collecting area of the doublestation network must be determined. We first calculated the raw collecting area by dividing the FoV of the camera into a 5 × 5 • two-dimensional grid, following the method described by Blaauw et al (2016). The squares were projected to a reference height 1 defining irregular quadrilaterals due to the effects of perspective distortion present in wide-angle cameras.…”

Section: Flux Measurementsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Characterisation of the Perseid meteoroid stream through SPOSH observations between 2010–2016

Margonis

Christou

Oberst

2019

A&A

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We have characterised the Perseid meteoroid stream from data acquired in a series of observing campaigns between 2010 and 2016. The data presented in this work were obtained by the Smart Panoramic Optical Sensor Head (SPOSH), an all-sky camera system designed to image faint transient noctilucent phenomena on dark planetary hemispheres. For the data reduction, a sophisticated software package was developed that utilises the high geometric and photometric quality of images obtained by the camera system. We identify 934 meteors as Perseids, observed over a long period between late July (∼124 • ) and mid-to-late August (∼147 • ). The maximum meteor activity contributing to the annual shower was found at λ = 140. • 08 ± 0. • 07. The radiant of the shower was estimated at RA = 47. • 2 and Dec = 57. • 5 with a median error of 0. • 6 and 0. • 2, respectively. The mean population index of the shower between solar longitudes of 120. • 68 and 145. • 19 was r = 2.36 ± 0.05, showing strong temporal variation. A predicted outburst in shower activity for the night of August 11-12, 2016 was confirmed, with a peak observed 12.75 hr before the annual maximum at 23:30 ± 15 UT. We measure a peak flux of 6.1 × 10 −4 km −2 hr −1 for meteoroids of mass 1.6 × 10 −2 g or more, appearing in the time period between 23:00 and 00:00 UT. We estimate the measured flux of the outburst meteoroids to be approximately twice as high as the annual meteoroid flux of the same mass. The population index of r = 2.19 ± 0.08, computed from the outburst Perseids in 2016, is higher than the value of r = 1.92 ± 0.06 derived from meteors observed in 2015 belonging to the annual Perseid shower which was active near the time of the outburst. A dust trail with an unusually high population index of r = 3.58 ± 0.24 was encountered in 2013 between solar longitudes 136. • 261 and 137. • 442. The relatively high r-value implies an encounter with a dust trail rich in low-mass particles.

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“…This work was designed to help determine meteoroid fluxes on the wide-field meteor camera network at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center (Blaauw et al, 2016). The system was established to automatically calculate the flux of mm-sized meteoroids from any active showers or sporadic sources daily.…”

Section: Nasa Wide-field Meteor Camera Networkmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The range is calculated at numerous places to determine the limiting magnitude throughout the collecting volume. The details can be found in Blaauw et al (2016). Another problem in calculating this generically for a meteor shower entails that ζ varies across the FOV.…”

Section: Meteor Limiting Magnitudementioning

confidence: 99%

Determination of the meteor limiting magnitude

Kingery

Blaauw²

2017

Planetary and Space Science

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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 thought to follow a power law, thus being slightly off in the limiting magnitude can have a significant effect on the measured flux. Sky conditions can change on fairly short timescales; therefore one must monitor the meteor limiting magnitude at regular intervals throughout the night, rather than just measuring it once. We use the stellar limiting magnitude as a proxy of the meteor limiting magnitude. Our method for determining the stellar limiting magnitude and how we transform it into the meteor limiting magnitude is presented. These methods are currently applied to NASA's wide-field meteor camera network to determine nightly fluxes, but are applicable to other camera networks.

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Optical meteor fluxes and application to the 2015 Perseids

Cited by 14 publications

References 15 publications

A new method for measuring the meteor mass index: application to the 2018 Draconid meteor shower outburst

A new method for measuring the meteor mass index: application to the 2018 Draconid meteor shower outburst

Characterisation of the Perseid meteoroid stream through SPOSH observations between 2010–2016

Determination of the meteor limiting magnitude

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