A southern hemisphere survey of meteor shower radiants and associated stream orbits using single station radar observations

Abstract

The 33.2 MHz interferometric meteor radars located at Davis Station, Antarctica and Darwin, Australia typically detect around 15 000 specular underdense meteor echoes every day. While the angle of arrival of the scattered radio wave can be inferred using phase differences between receive antennae, the direction of individual meteors is not known beyond a plane of ambiguity perpendicular to the angle of arrival. Using the great circle mapping technique with a Jones & Jones type weighting function, 37 meteor shower systems were detected in data collected at both locations over 2006-2007, including nine undocumented showers. The orbital elements of the parent debris streams were then calculated for the 31 showers where sufficiently precise measurements were available. © 2009 RAS.