1. Meteor head echo climatology at Northern polar latitudes
C. Schult, G. Stober and J. L. Chau
Meteoroids 2016

2. Content Introduction MAARSY Observation Mass estimations
Experiment
Example/Errors
Observation
Mass estimations
Main/Side lobe comparison
C. Schult Meteoroids 2016

3. Introduction
Radar measurements are independent of weather conditions (day and night)
Completely automated systems
Trajectories over several km in length (in contrast to one point measurements of specular systems)
Head echo measurements require High Power Large Aperture radar systems
expensive, constructed for other purposes
So far only measurements on campaign basis (Arecibo, Jicarmarca, MU, PFISR)
Use of a multi target experiment design to observe atmospheric scatterers as well as meteor head echoes
Quasi continous measurements (depending on other measurement campaigns)
C. Schult Meteoroids page 1

4. MAARSY (Experiment) C. Schult Meteoroids 2016 page 2 PRF 1000 Hz Code
16bit-complementary
Pulse-length
16x300 m
Start range
49.8 km
End range
134.7 km
Gates
283
Resolution
300 m
Beam
Zenith
[Latteck et al, 2010]
C. Schult Meteoroids page 2

5. MAARSY (Experiment) Meteors E-Region D-Region Mesosphärische Echos
Troposphäre
Mesosphärische Echos
Meteors
E-Region
D-Region
mesospheric echoes
troposphere (UTLS)
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6. Head echo
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7. Trajectory errors
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8. Observation
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9. Obsvation
mean ablation height: km (97.5 km on day 162 to 102 km on day 323)
SA: km
NA: km
HE/AH: 95.5 km
NT: 97.4 km
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10. Observation
Convolution of sporadic source location and Earth filtering
mean elevation: 30°
Lowest mean of 20° during spring equinox
Same amount of slow and fast meteors at the first half of the year
In the second half the count rates of fast meteor rise and dominate the observations
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11. Acceleration Acceleration values are highly elevation dependant
Smaller values in the high precision distribution
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12. Dynamical masses
The dashed lines include just high qualitiy events and have a 4 times higher mass distribution.
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13. Main/side lobe comparison
Theor. antenna gain
Meteor counts within the beam
C. Schult Meteoroids page 11

14. Main/side lobe comparison
Main lobe radiants
Side lobe radiants
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15. Main/side lobe comparison
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16. Summary
First quasicontinuous meteor head echo measurements for over two years with MAARSY
Strongly seasonal variation in the count rate due to the high latitude location
Elevation (error) has a high impact on the acceleration/ dyn. masses
Side lobes (-30dB 2 way gain) detect statisticaly 4 times higher masses (different Apex/Helion ratio)

17. Thank you for your attention!
C. Schult URSI AT-RASC