Issue |
A&A
Volume 683, March 2024
|
|
---|---|---|
Article Number | L1 | |
Number of page(s) | 6 | |
Section | Letters to the Editor | |
DOI | https://doi.org/10.1051/0004-6361/202348358 | |
Published online | 28 February 2024 |
Letter to the Editor
Meteoroid rotation and quasi-periodic brightness variation of meteor light curves
Istituto Nazionale di Astrofisica, Osservatorio Astrofisico di Torino, Via Osservatorio 20, Pino Torinese 10025, Italy
e-mail: salvatore.mancuso@inaf.it
Received:
20
October
2023
Accepted:
29
January
2024
Meteor light curves are sometimes known to display flickering: rapid, quasi-periodic variations in brightness. This effect is generally attributed to the rotational modulation of the ablation rate, which is caused by the time-varying cross section area presented by a nonspherical rotating meteoroid to the oncoming airflow. In this work we investigate the effects that the rotation of a meteoroid of given shape (spherical, cubic, or cylindrical) has on the meteor’s light curve, given state-of-the-art experimental laboratory estimates of the drag and lift coefficients of hypersonic flow (Mach number > 5) around various shaped objects. The meteoroid’s shape is important in determining these two forces, due to the different response of the drag and lift coefficients according to the angle of attack. As a case study, the model was applied to a fireball observed on 2018 April 17 by the PRISMA network, a system of all-sky cameras that achieves a systematic monitoring of meteors and fireballs in the skies over the Italian territory. The results show that this methodology is potentially able to yield a powerful diagnostic of the rotation rate of meteoroids prior to their encounter with the atmosphere, while also providing essential information on their pre-fall actual shapes.
Key words: methods: data analysis / techniques: image processing / astrometry / meteorites / meteors / meteoroids
© The Authors 2024
Open Access article, published by EDP Sciences, under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
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