Center for Astrophysics Research and Technologies Seminar Series
Testing the Nature of Meteor Radio Afterglows
Presented by Savin Varghese
Meteors occur when high velocity, solid material collides with earth's atmosphere, ablates, and ionizes forming a plasma trail. The recent discovery of high frequency (HF; 3-30 MHz) and very high frequency (VHF; 30-300 MHz) radio emission from meteors in 2014 has opened a new window to study meteor physics. The radio emission from meteors was detected at frequencies below 60 MHz using the all-sky imager of the first station of the Long Wavelength Array (LWA1). Follow-up observations revealed that the emission is broadband, has a power law dependence on frequency and typically last for 10-300 seconds.
In this work, we use the newly commissioned LWA -SV station (Sevilleta National Wild Refuge) along with LWA 1 to carry out coordinated observations which will probe the emission mechanism. The combined all-sky observations from LWA1 and LWA-SV have already detected co-observed meteor radio afterglows. The presence of false positives from RFI and scintillation of bright radio sources make the detection of meteor afterglows a difficult process. We triangulate the transients seen at both stations to eliminate false positives and to identify radio afterglows. In this talk, I will focus on how co-observed meteor radio afterglows are used to understand the nature of radio emission by addressing whether they are isotropic or not.
2:00 pm, Thursday, May 10, 2018
PAIS-2540, PAIS
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