High-resolution modelling of meteoroid ablation

¹ Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Western Ontario, London ON, Canada
e-mail: margaret.campbell@uwo.ca
² Astronomical Institute of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic, Ondřejov observatory, Czech Republic
³ Centre for Planetary Science and Exploration, London ON, Canada

Received: 31 May 2013
Accepted: 8 July 2013

Abstract

Context. The structure and composition of meteoroids is of great interest because of the insight it provides into their parent asteroids and comets.

Aims. Recently acquired, high-resolution video measurements of meteors will be used to evaluate two models of meteoroid ablation.

Methods. Ten meteors were observed with the Canadian Automated Meteor Observatory (CAMO), which uses pairs of mirrors to track meteors telescopically in the sky with a resolution of up to 3 meters per pixel. Two meteoroid ablation models were used to fit the wide-field light curves and deceleration measurements of the meteors, and the wakes predicted by each model were compared to the wakes measured in the telescopic system.

Results. Both models produced satisfactory fits to the wide field measurements, but both were very poor at predicting the narrow field brightness profiles of the meteors.

Conclusions. Models of meteoroid fragmentation in the atmosphere need significant improvement to match observations. Data from the CAMO observatory mirror systems provide significant constraints and can be used in the development of a new model of meteoroid ablation.