A meteoroid stream survey using meteor head echo observations from the Middle Atmosphere ALOMAR Radar System (MAARSY)

doi:10.1016/j.icarus.2018.02.032

Icarus

Volume 309, 15 July 2018, Pages 177-186

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.icarus.2018.02.032 Get rights and content

Highlights

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First meteor head echo shower survey in polar latitudes.
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33 meteor showers are identified with a wavelet shower search algorithm.
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1% of the head echoes are associated with meteor showers.
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Differential mass indices are measured for the Perseids, Geminids, Quadrantids and Orionids.

Abstract

Results from a meteor head echo shower survey using the quasi continuous meteor observations of the high power large aperture radar MAARSY, located in northern Norway (69.30°N, 16.04°E) are presented. The data set comprises 760 000 head echoes detected during two and half years sensitive to an effective limiting masses below 10 $^{- 8}$ kg. Using a wavelet shower search algorithm, we identified 33 meteor showers in the data set all of which are found in the IAU meteor shower catalog. We find  ∼ 1% of all measured head echoes at these masses are associated with meteor showers. Comparison of shower radiants from this survey with the observation of the Canadian Meteor Orbit radar (CMOR) transverse scattering radar system shows generally good agreement, although there are large differences in the measured durations of some meteor showers. Differential mass indices (s) of  ∼ 1.5–1.6 are measured for the Perseids (PER), Geminids (GEM) and Quadrantids (QUA) showers. The Orionids (ORI) show a much steeper mass index of 2.0, in agreement with other observations at small particle sizes, suggesting the Halleyid showers, in particular, are rich in very small meteoroids.

Introduction

Meteor showers, in contrast to sporadic meteors, are released from a common parent body, either a comet or asteroid. Study of meteor showers is particularly valuable as the meteoroids released from a single parent body provide direct samples of those particular parents. More generally, understanding how meteoroid streams form and subsequently evolve provide insight into the timing and mode of decay processes of small solar system bodies (Williams and Ryabova, 2011).

Historically, most meteor shower surveys were conducted using optical instruments (Hemenway et al., 1973) or transverse scattering meteor radar systems (e.g. Sekanina, 1970, Brown, Weryk, Wong, Jones, 2008, Younger, Reid, Vincent, Holdsworth, Murphy, 2009, Janches, Hormaechea, Brunini, Hocking, Fritts, 2013). More recently, shower surveys have been undertaken with dedicated networks such as the Cameras for Allsky Meteor Surveillance project (CAMS) (Jenniskens et al., 2016) and the Southern Argentina Agile MEteor Radar (SAAMER) (Pokorný et al., 2017). Brown et al. (2008) provides an overview of the past shower surveys and the history of meteoroid orbit surveys in general while Jenniskens (2017) provides a contemporary review of the subject. Surveys to date have resulted in a total of 112 meteor showers being designated as established by the International Astronomical Union (IAU)¹. An additional 589 working showers are also listed by the IAU.

Meteor showers are generally richer in larger meteoroids compared to the sporadic background. The fraction of all meteoroids which belong to showers is estimated to rise to a maximum exceeding 50% at cm-sizes and falls to less than 10% at sub-mm sizes (Jenniskens, 2006).

However, the small-size end of the meteoroid stream spectrum is of interest for several reasons. The very smallest meteoroids in a stream are removed due to the effects of radiation pressure (Burns, Lamy, Soter, 1979, Dohnanyi, 1970). This is potentially a very sensitive statistical probe for meteoroid properties (such as bulk density), particularly for highly eccentric orbits. Additionally, streams which are rich in small meteoroids must either be young or have some production source for very small meteoroids (e.g. fragmentation/thermal sintering) as small particles evolve out of a stream most quickly. Streams rich in small particles may also have dynamical effects which preferentially deliver only small meteoroids to Earth intersection (eg. the 2012 Draconids (Ye et al., 2013)). To date no dedicated survey has explored which streams remain detectable at the very smallest meteoroid masses ( $\leq 10^{- 10}$ kg), though some recent measurements demonstrate that at least some showers contain meteoroids in the order of these masses or smaller.

The meteor shower survey described by Galligan (2000) remains to date the only survey to very faint magnitudes (M ≈ +13) performed on a nearly complete ‘virtual’ year comprised of half a million orbits detected with the multi-station transverse scattering Advanced Meteor Orbit Radar (AMOR). This survey, to a limiting mass of order $10^{- 10}$ kg, found only half a dozen streams with significant . They estimate that less than 1% of all meteoroids in their survey could be linked to a definite shower (Galligan, 2000).

Observation of meteor head echoes using high power large aperture (HPLA) radars is a unique method to measure accurate atmospheric trajectories for large numbers of very small meteoroids. Yet, this technique has not been systematically used to survey which streams are present at very small masses. However, using meteor head echoes to obtain information about meteor showers is not a new idea. Hey et al. (1947) were the first to use meteor head echoes to estimate the velocity of the Draconid meteor shower.

More recently, HPLA head echo observations of some showers include: the Perseid and Leonid meteoroids with the ALTAIR system (Close, Hunt, Minardi, McKeen, 2000, Close, Hunt, McKeen, Minardi, 2002), the detection of the Eta Aquariids and Perseids with the Jicamarca VHF radar (Chau and Galindo, 2008) and the Orionids and Geminids which have been detected with the MU radar system (Kero, Szasz, Nakamura, Meisel, Ueda, Fujiwara, Terasawa, Miyamoto, Nishimura, 2011, Kero, Szasz, Nakamura, 2013). The Middle Atmosphere ALOMAR Radar System (MAARSY) detected the Geminid meteor stream during a sounding rocket campaign in 2010 (Stober, Schult, Baumann, Latteck, Rapp, 2013, Schult, Stober, Chau, Latteck, 2013). These studies collectively demonstrate that very small meteoroids are present in several of the major streams, but the extent and strength of streams at head echo masses is unclear.

To date, all meteor head echo shower campaigns were initiated for specific known showers and were operational on time scales of hours or days, not covering the entire shower period. A complete meteor head echo shower survey has not been done, in part because of a lack of daily observations of head echoes from HPLA radar systems for a period of a year or more.

In November 2013, we started a quasi continuous monitoring experiment with MAARSY on the Northern Norwegian island Andøya (69.30°N, 16.04° E). This experiment configuration is still running and a first analysis on the overall count rate, detection heights, velocities and the dynamical masses of the sporadic meteor background and a comparison with a meteor input function has been presented by Schult et al. (2017).

In this complementary work we identify meteor showers detectable among these 0.7 million orbits using a wavelet approach to identify meteor showers in the same data. This survey comprises the first equivalent full-year shower survey based on meteor head echo observations.

Section snippets

MAARSY: meteor head echo observation methodology and analysis

Table 1 summarizes the radar parameters used for the experimental setup in this study. The procedure followed in the raw data analysis shown as a step-by-step process as applied to an example head echo using the same experimental mode as used in this study is detailed in Schult et al. (2017). Here we only briefly summarize the basic interferometric analysis of particular importance in determining radiant accuracy and refer the reader to Schult et al. (2017) for more details.

MAARSY is an HPLA

3D wavelet of the radiant distribution

Meteor showers are localized enhancements in the density of radiants in time-velocity-radiant coordinates compared to the background. While no formal quantitative definition of a meteor shower exists, Galligan (2000) was the first to apply wavelet analysis to detection of meteor streams in orbital meteor data.

Building on this earlier work, the procedure used in the current study to localize meteor showers using the wavelet transform was presented in Brown et al. (2010) and updated in Pokorný

Results and discussion

We identified 33 showers which have been documented in the IAU list and have been reported in previous radar surveys (e.g. Brown, Wong, Weryk, Wiegert, 2010, Pokorný, Janches, Brown, Hormaechea, 2017, Jenniskens, Nnon, Albers, Gural, Haberman, Holman, Morales, Grigsby, Samuels, Johannink, 2016).

Fig. 4 shows the location of all detected showers in a radiant map ( ${(λ - λ_{0})}_{g}, β_{g}$ ) color coded by geocentric velocity (V_g). The size of the symbol represents the significance of the shower at its time of

Conclusion

In this paper we demonstrated that HPLA head echo radar observations are able to detect and measure properties of a variety of meteor showers. The presence of meteoroids in streams having masses as low as $10^{- 9}$ kg to as small as $10^{- 10}$ kg, for faster meteor showers, is directly demonstrated by their visibility in these head echo data. We find mass indices near 1.5–1.6 for the PER, QUA and GEM showers. The Orionids show a much steeper mass index close to 2.0, suggesting smaller meteoroids in this

Acknowledgements

The technical support by the Andøya Rocket Range (ARR) is acknowledged. Furthermore we thank the IAP staff for the technical support, operations and maintenance of MAARSY. This work was supported by grant STO 1053/1-1 (AHEAD) of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG). PGB was supported by the NASA Meteoroid Environment Office through co-operative agreement NNX15AC94A.

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