An Improved Method to Measure Head Echoes Using a Meteor Radar

Abstract

We present an improved methodology to obtain absolute position and velocity of meteor head echoes, which can yield orbital information, generally limited to the use of High-Power, Large-Aperture radars, using an advanced-designed specular meteor radar. The observations, which were performed during a period when an outburst of the β-Taurid meteor shower was expected, were performed with the Southern Argentine Agile MEteor Radar. Three different methodologies are utilized to confirm our results: an improved interferometric solver building on previous work, and two different target localization techniques using remote receiving stations. In addition, we performed simultaneous optical observations during the meteor shower period. Overall, 71 radar head echo events were detected and analyzed using interferometry, while 12 of those events have detected signals strong enough to be analyzed using localization methods at the remote sites. Due to poor weather, however, the optical cameras only observed two events simultaneously with the radar. Results from these events are in agreement with the radar results. We find that interferometry methods from both radar and optical data resulted in the most accurate estimation of meteor properties, while target localization techniques derived similar results, albeit with larger uncertainty. We also computed heliocentric meteoroid orbits, and while a fraction was hyperbolic, we believe these to be due to uncertainty. Two events are suspected to be β-Taurid shower members.