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(meteorobs) Re: average meteor (was: Snakes and meteors)
> weakly dependent on mass. Capricornid (v=23km/s) and Leonid (v=71km/s) of
> the same mass may differ by more than five magnitudes! Or these two of the
> same magnitude differ in mass by factor 1000! (Ouch, this is really
> awfully lot...am I making some mistake? I'm improvising this out of my
I checked this in a book, and the figure 1000 is probably slightly bigger
than it should be when some other effects are taken into account.
First, some of the coeficients are different for these two showers.
Actually, some of them are velocity dependent, through empiricaly
determined formulae. One of them goes as ~(v + #)^-1 for large v, and that
probably plays the major role in lowering down figure 1000 (effectively,
it drops down V^5 to v^4 _for large v only_). To complicate life further,
everything is dependent on zen.dist. of the radiant (usualy very differnet
for Capr. and Leonids).
So, to the accuracy I used, figure 1000 should be read as 'very, very
large number', and with corrections included it probably comes to be of
the order 100, possibly several hundreds.
Hope that at least someone followed me.
vl.
References: