An investigation of the structure of the Southern Hemisphere radio-meteor streams

Roux, David Gerhardus

Title: An investigation of the structure of the Southern Hemisphere radio-meteor streams
Creator: Roux, David Gerhardus
Subject: Radio meteorology -- Southern Hemisphere
Subject: Solar system
Date Issued: 1988
Date: 1988
Type: Thesis
Type: Masters
Type: MSc
Identifier: vital:5448
Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1004587
Identifier: Radio meteorology -- Southern Hemisphere
Identifier: Solar system
Description: Our current knowledge of the Solar System, with a particular emphasis on the systems of interplanetary objects, is reviewed, and the theory of meteors and the reflection of radio waves from meteoric ionization is then discussed. A description of the meteor radar is given and a method of calibrating the antenna beam is developed. The main project comprises two parts: (a) A general survey of the radar echorate for 20 major and minor meteor streams and the sporadic meteor background, conducted from Grahamstown over the period 1986 April to 1988 January, is described. Definite shower activity was observed for all of the major and some of the minor showers. (b) Based on a scheme proposed by previous workers (Morton & Jones), a method of recovering meteor radiant distributions from the distribution of echo directions is developed. We devise a technique of compensating for possible distortions of the resulting radiant maps, which may arise due to the arisotropic antenna beam. This involves a system of echo-weighting. Radiant maps which showed considerably less distortion than those of the above workers were obtained without the weighting procedure. It is concluded that, although the method in its present form introduces spurious features into the maps, the principle is sound and should eventually be refined to produce the desired compensation
Format: 196 leaves
Format: pdf
Publisher: Rhodes University
Publisher: Faculty of Science, Physics and Electronics
Language: English
Rights: Roux, David Gerhardus

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