HIGH SPATIAL AND TEMPORAL RESOLUTION OPTICAL SEARCH FOR EVIDENCE OF METEOROID FRAGMENTATION

Hawkes, R. L.
Brown, P. G.
Kaiser, N. R.
Faloon, A. J.
Hill, K. A.
Rogers, L. A.

¹Physics Department, Mount Allison University, Sackville, NB, Canada, E4L 1E6,
²Physics and Astronomy Department, University of Western Ontario, London, ON, Canada, N6A 3K7,

Current address: L. A. Rogers, Department of Physics, University of Ottawa, Canada

Current address: N. R. Kaiser, Department of Geology and Geophysics, University of Calgary, Canada

Earth, Moon, and Planets 95(4):p 587-593, 2004.

A digital image intensified CCD camera with an electronically gated image intensifier was used to produce very short duration images of meteors. The observational system employed a 0.40 m F/4.5 Newtonian telescope to obtain high spatial resolution. A second intensified CCD camera was used to yield height information using parallax. At a typical meteor height one pixel (for the vertically oriented system) corresponded to about 1.1 m. A sampling of 59 mainly sporadic meteors was analyzed. There is clear variability from meteor to meteor, with many meteors (nearly 50%) showing only a small amount of wake, while some meteors (approximately 20%) have the off segments completely filled in.