Leonid meteor ablation, energy exchange, and trail morphology

Abstract

This paper describes theoretical model studies of the interaction of Leonid meteoroids with the earth’s atmosphere. Subject to some modest-to-strenuous approximations we compute the rates of ablation and deceleration, energy deposition, and terminal altitudes of the meteors as functions of their initial mass and bulk density, velocity, trajectory entry angle, drag coefficient, heat of ablation, and an ablation energy transfer fraction. We find that the dominant energy deposition in the atmosphere is associated with the stopping of the ablated meteor particles and vapor by the surrounding air. Then having computed the energy deposition rates vs. altitude we compute the hydrodynamic and radiative expansion of the hot wake material in the radial direction, along with the associated air chemistry. From the computed results we can then plot two-dimensional temperature contours – as functions of the instantaneous distance behind the meteor and radial distance from the center of the wake, at various altitudes along the meteor’s path. We also compute the rates of emission of radiation and the radiative efficiency, and discuss comparisons with observations.