(meteorobs) singing meteors

[Bruce McCurdy]

Ed wrote:

>  My comment was
> more based on the fact that a number of meteors may occur at the same time
> during a meteor storm like the Leonids and it would be difficult to say
> which meteor caused which echo.

    That is definitely true, in fact the two biggest limitations of the
radio method in my experience are:

    1) there is no way to correlate any given meteor to its source. So while
my radio counts at the Northern Claw Radio Meteor Observatory (the one in my
basement) will go way up during the upcoming Geminids, there is no way to
differentiate a Geminid from a Monocerotid or a Sporadid. At best one can
take the total rate minus the normal background rate and attribute the
difference to the major shower. Crude, but not ineffective for the good
showers. I got outstanding results for last year's Geminids.

    2) the radio method can only count to one at a time. Therefore a few
simultaneous meteors will be one radio burst, and a single overdense radio
meteor can 'drown out' other activity during the tens of seconds it lasts.

    For the Leonids peak of 2002 I recorded 173 spikes at my home detector
(the ) in the hour 1000-1100 UT (see the strip charts at
http://www.skyscan.ca/leonids_2002_results.htm ;mine is third from the top
although all are similar).  At the time of the peak they were coming almost
continuously, causing in effect continuous reception and one big fat spike
on my data chart. Unfortunately I did not have a clear sky to do the visual
comparison that night, however the previous year when I had clear skies but
no radio observatory yet, I counted 655 in the peak hour which included a
number of instances of simultaneous meteors, 3, 4, 5 or more visible at
once. Visually I'm sure I undercounted, but the radio would have been
saturated. So in the rare instance of a storm the radio count would be lower
than visual when normally it's higher by a factor of 2 or 3.

    One learns to accept the limitations of the method and take them into
account, That's why my preference is to do both visual and car radio
simultaneously. Another technique is audio: in Edmonton we often observe
showers in a group, and I've gotten to the point where I can estimate within
1 magnitude the brightness of a meteor/fireball seen by others but not me
based on the volume and excitement level in their voices! :)  Seriously,
this eavesdropping method provides further examples of the radio bursting
and the visual observer reacting (almost) simultaneously. That the song and
the dance are related is beyond question IMO.

    regards, Bruce