Meteor Observations in U.S.S.R.

Abstract

WITH the object of studying the acceleration of the velocity of a meteor, the Moscow branch of the U.S.S.R. Astro-Geodetical Society has installed a camera of focal ratio /2 behind a two-bladed fan, which interrupts the exposure on a star field nine times per second, at Koutchino, twenty kilometres east of Moscow. Prints of two photographs?one of a meteor and another of a meteor spectrum? together with a note upon meteor observations, have reached us from Moscow. From a typical example of observations collected (to be described in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society by MM. Fedynski and Stanjukowitsch) it appears that the velocity decreases by 37 per cent as the meteor falls from 90 km. to 55 km. in height. The same group of observers conducts observations of meteor spectra with a prismatic camera; forty-seven lines were recognised by M. Fedynski in a meteor of stellar magnitude? 3, of which the strongest were those of ionised calcium. A third exposure, made in a camera distant 1.5 km., enables the observers to compute the height of the meteor at any point on its illuminated path.