10.1007/s11208-008-2002-z

Abstract

The existing methods for determining the extra-atmospheric mass of meteor bodies from observations of their movement in the atmosphere allow a certain arbitrariness. Active attempts to overcome the discrepancy between the results of calculations based on different approaches often lead to physically incorrect conclusions. A way out is to laboriously accumulate the estimates and computation results and to consistently remove ambiguities. To correctly interpret the observed brightness of a meteor, one should use contemporary methods and the results of physical studies of the emitting gas. In the present work, the extra-atmospheric masses of small meteoroids of the Prairie and Canada bolide camera networks were calculated from the observed braking. It turned out that, in many cases, the conditions of movement of meteor bodies in the atmosphere corresponded to a free molecular airflow about a body. The so-called dynamic mass of the bodies was estimated from the real densities of the meteoroid material, which corresponded to monolithic water ice and stone, and for the proper values of the product of the drag coefficient and shape factor. When producing the trial function for the body trajectories in the “velocity-altitude” variables, we did not allow for fragmentation explicitly, since it is less probable for small meteoroids than for large ones. As before, our estimates differ substantially from the photometric masses published in the corresponding tables.