No abstract

Context. The structure and composition of meteoroids is of great interest because of the insight it provides into their parent asteroids and comets. Aims. Recently acquired, high-resolution video measurements of meteors will be used to evaluate two models of meteoroid ablation. Methods. Ten meteors were observed with the Canadian Automated Meteor Observatory (CAMO), which uses pairs of mirrors to track meteors telescopically in the sky with a resolution of up to 3 meters per pixel. Two meteoroid ablation models were used to fit the wide-field light curves and deceleration measurements of the meteors, and the wakes predicted by each model were compared to the wakes measured in the telescopic system. Results. Both models produced satisfactory fits to the wide field measurements, but both were very poor at predicting the narrow field brightness profiles of the meteors. Conclusions. Models of meteoroid fragmentation in the atmosphere need significant improvement to match observations. Data from the CAMO observatory mirror systems provide significant constraints and can be used in the development of a new model of meteoroid ablation.

No abstract

No abstract

The luminous efficiency of meteors is poorly known, but critical for determining the meteoroid mass. We present an uncertainty analysis of the luminous efficiency as determined by the classical ablation equations, and suggest a possible method for determining the luminous efficiency of real meteor events. We find that a two-term exponential fit to simulated lag data is able to reproduce simulated luminous efficiencies reasonably well.