Light-Emission Measurements of Sodium at Simulated Meteor Conditions

Model of the ablation of faint meteors

“…Data exist for some spectral emissions of certain elements when they collide with nitrogen or oxygen (Boitnott & Savage (1971), magnesium and calcium; Boitnott & Savage (1970), sodium). These can be used with a chemical model of the meteoroid to determine the light produced in given spectral bands.…”

Laboratory Determination of the Luminous Efficiency of Meteor Constituents

“…The crossed molecular beam apparatus used to make these measurements shown in figure 1 has been described in detail in our previous reports (Boitnott and Savage, 1970;. Briefly nitrogen or oxygen is ionized in the source and focused through the analyzing magnet to select the desired ion.…”

“…The measurements were generally made with metal atom densities of the order of 10 10 cm -3 while the background density of gas in the test chamber was about 5 X10 10 cm -3 . For Na, the flux was measured with a hot tungsten oxide surface ionizer as described in our Na paper (Boitnott and Savage, 1970); and the Mg, Ca, and Fe fluxes were measured with an oscillating quartz crystal. A portion of the photons generated by the collisions pass through a bandpass filter and are counted.…”

“…At wavelengths greater than 4200 A, the blackbody radiation from the showing similar characteristics but with smaller magnitudes. Collisions involving O2 instead of N 2 generally had lower cross sections, by as much as a factor of 5, and did not necessarily show the same variations with energy (Savage and Boitnott and Savage, 1970). Of considerable interest are the CaII(l) lines, H and K, since they frequently appear enhanced in meteor spectra and are thought to indicate slip flow conditions.…”