[Prev][Next][Index][Thread]
(meteorobs) Micrometeorites
>From the material I have gathered in print and over the last four and a half
months of visually looking at particles through my microscope, I have
accumulated the following information on particles that seem to increase and
decrease with respect to known visual meteor activity.
1. The particles are circular on first glance, but are obviously spherical
under magnifications of 100x and 400x. At 100x the particle is completely out
of focus when you are focused on the slide's plane. As you lower the slide the
outside edges of the particle eventually come into focus and continued lowering
brings the top into focus.
2. The particles are reflective. This can best be seen when using a light
source that is to the side of the slide and not coming up from below.
3. Magnifications of 400x reveals what I call a "folded appearance" for the
larger particles. From recent experience with my kids' Play-Do, you can
duplicate the appearance of a micrometeorite by flattening the Play-Do and then
crunching it up and rolling it into a sphere. Unless you have worked the sphere
for a long time, the resulting Play-Do sphere has lines across it showing where
the edges were before you rolled it up. Of course, a bright Play-Do color takes
away from the micrometeorite appearance. :-)
I use double well slides for my studies. I don't have a slide with me, but the
well is perhaps three-quarters of an inch in diameter. I count the particles in
each well, add them up, divide by two to obtain an average, and then divide by
the amount of time the slide was outside to obtain a daily average. Because of
the upcoming daylight meteor showers, I have been putting three slides out each
day for the last two days--one for 24 hours and the other two for 12 hours
each. I am hoping to better isolate the micrometeorite peak for the daylight
Arietids. I can not keep this pace up, however, because it takes at least 15
minutes to scan each well, and the larger number of particles around the Eta
Aquarid maximum took me about 30 minutes for each well.
Gary
Follow-Ups: