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Re: (meteorobs) Meteoroid Size



At 02:57 PM 9/30/98 -0700, Dale wrote:
>I am guessing that should be 0.2 centimeters rather than 2 centimeters.
>It is a better fit with the stated weight also, a 2cm object weighing 1
>gram would have the density of styrofoam.
>Dale

No, it'd be 2 cm.  That yields a density of .24 gm/cm^3 or so.  Densities
much lower than water are commonly found for cometary-debris-type
meteoroids.  Porous ice balls is the best description of them.  Brown and
Jones (1998) found the best fit to observed characteristics of the Perseid
shower to be a model using meteoroid densities between 0.1 and 0.8 gm/cm^3.
 Another paper gave a figure very close to the .24 gm/cm^3 above for the
Perseids as well, but I can't locate it right at the moment, the number
just stuck in my head!  Others [Bibarsov, Narziev and Chebotarev (1990),
Babadzhanov and Makhmudov (1992)] found lower limits of meteoroid density
of 0.5 and 0.6 gm/cm^3 respectively using radar techniques.  They were
studying sporadics and the Taurid stream respectively; older populations
will lose their less dense members fairly rapidly.  The average Taurid
density was actually 3.72 gm/cm^3.

Jim B.



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