TY - JOUR
T1 - High-resolution radar observations of meteoroid fragmentation and flaring at the Jicamarca Radio Observatory
AU - Zhu, Qian
AU - Dinsmore, Ross
AU - Gao, Boyi
AU - Mathews, John D.
N1 - Funding Information:
This effort was supported under NSF grants ATM 07–21613 and AGS 12–02019 to The Pennsylvania State University.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2016 The Authors.
PY - 2016/4/1
Y1 - 2016/4/1
N2 - Although meteoroid fragmentation has been observed and studied in the optical meteor community since the 1950s, no definitive fragmentation mechanisms for the relatively small meteoroids (mass ≲10-4 kg) have been proposed. This is in part due to the lack of observations to constrain physical models of the fragmentation process. While it is challenging to record fragmentation in faint optical meteors, observing faint meteors using High-Power, Large-Aperture coherent radars can yield considerable micrometeoroid fragmentation information especially when employing interferometric imaging. Radar interferometric imaging can potentially resolve the fragmentation process in three spatial dimensions by monitoring the evolution of the plasma in the meteor head-echo, flare-echo, and trail-echo regions. We present results of applying a newly developed hybrid interferometric-CS (compressed sensing) technique (H-ICS) to radar meteor observations conducted at the Jicamarca Radio Observatory in Peru. With the H-ICS technique - which provides improved spatial resolution over earlier techniques - we analyse five representative meteoroid fragmentation events. Results include observations of both along and transverse to the trajectory spreading of the developing plasma apparently caused by gross fragmentation and plasma diffusion parallel to the geomagnetic field near the geomagnetic equator.
AB - Although meteoroid fragmentation has been observed and studied in the optical meteor community since the 1950s, no definitive fragmentation mechanisms for the relatively small meteoroids (mass ≲10-4 kg) have been proposed. This is in part due to the lack of observations to constrain physical models of the fragmentation process. While it is challenging to record fragmentation in faint optical meteors, observing faint meteors using High-Power, Large-Aperture coherent radars can yield considerable micrometeoroid fragmentation information especially when employing interferometric imaging. Radar interferometric imaging can potentially resolve the fragmentation process in three spatial dimensions by monitoring the evolution of the plasma in the meteor head-echo, flare-echo, and trail-echo regions. We present results of applying a newly developed hybrid interferometric-CS (compressed sensing) technique (H-ICS) to radar meteor observations conducted at the Jicamarca Radio Observatory in Peru. With the H-ICS technique - which provides improved spatial resolution over earlier techniques - we analyse five representative meteoroid fragmentation events. Results include observations of both along and transverse to the trajectory spreading of the developing plasma apparently caused by gross fragmentation and plasma diffusion parallel to the geomagnetic field near the geomagnetic equator.
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U2 - 10.1093/mnras/stw070
DO - 10.1093/mnras/stw070
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:84963520585
SN - 0035-8711
VL - 457
SP - 1759
EP - 1769
JO - Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
JF - Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
IS - 2
ER -