Evidence for transverse spread in Leonid meteors |
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| Authors: | A G LeBlanc † I S Murray ‡ R L Hawkes P Worden M D Campbell P Brown P Jenniskens R R Correll T Montague D D Babcock |
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| Institution: | Department of Physics, Mount Allison University, 67 York Street, Sackville, NB, Canada E4L 1E6; Headquarters USAF, 1480 Air Force Pentagon, Washington DC 20330-1480, USA; Physics and Astronomy Department, University of Western Ontario, London, ON, Canada N6A 3K7; SETI Institute, NASA Ames, Mail Stop 239-4, Moffett Field, CA 94035-1000, USA; Headquarters USAF Space Command and NASA Headquarters, 300 E Street SW, Washington DC 20546, USA; Air Force Research Laboratory, Space Vehicles Directorate, 3550 Aberdeen Avenue SE, Kirtland AFB, NM 87117-5776, USA; Centre for Research in Earth and Space Science, York University, Petrie Science Building, 4700 Keele Street, Toronto, ON, Canada M3J 1P3 |
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| Abstract: | We report here evidence for significant transverse spread of the light production region in bright Leonid meteors. One Leonid meteor has an apparent spread in the light production region of about 600 m perpendicular to the flight path for the meteor, that transverse spread persisting for at least 0.3 s. We have also detected short-duration, jet-like features emanating from a bright Leonid meteor recorded in 1998. These jet-like features have maximum spatial dimensions up to 1.9 km. While we cannot definitively rule out instrumental artefacts as a cause for these jet-like features, they may be evidence of motion contributing to the observed spatial spread in the light production region. |
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| Keywords: | meteors meteoroids |
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