The statistics of small-mass meteors observed simultaneously with optical imaging and the Poker Flat Incoherent Scatter Radar

Abstract

We present a statistical analysis of meteors observed simultaneously with optical imaging and the Poker Flat Incoherent Scatter Radar (PFISR). The observations analyzed were from 3 nights (3, 4 and October 5, 2010), totaling 20.5 ​h of observation time. Optical observations alone revealed 493 meteors, while the PFISR data contained 9324 meteors over that same time period. There were 224 meteors that were detected by both PFISR and the optical imaging. The focus of this paper is on these 224 meteors that were detected by both methods. For these meteors, the masses were calculated from the optical light curves combined with the total velocities and were found to range between 0.4 and 204 ​mg. Using these meteor observations as a baseline, the minimum meteoroid mass detectable by the PFISR radar was estimated to be around 0.14 ± 0.01 ​mg for a 70 ​km/s meteor. The origination radiants of these 224 meteors were calculated in Heliocentric ecliptic coordinates and they were found to originate from many different areas in the northern hemisphere and not particularly concentrated to any of the sporadic meteor complex sources.