Comparing Long-Lasting Meteor Trains in Visible and Radio Regimes

  • CART Astrophysics Seminar Series

March 13, 2025 2:00 PM
PAIS 3205

Host:
Greg Taylor
Presenter:
Logan Cordonnier (UNM)
Previous research has indicated a connection between two meteor phenomena, namely optical persistent trains (PTs) and meteor radio afterglows (MRAs). Both phenomena arise from intrinsic emission mechanisms; PTs are associated with chemiluminescent reactions and MRAs with radiation from the plasma trail. Data obtained by the Global Meteor Network (GMN), in conjunction with the Long Wavelength Array (LWA) radio telescope, enables me to examine the meteor properties corresponding to each phenomenon. In this presentation, I will discuss my efforts to detect and analyze MRAs in the all-sky radio data and will then compare these events to the existing catalog of PTs. The resulting catalog contains a total of 2,887 meteors, with 675 MRA events and 412 optical trains. Analyses suggest that the connection between the two, while still statistically significant, is not as strong as previously supposed. Despite this, a gradient boosting classification algorithm demonstrates high accuracy in predicting whether either phenomenon is likely given a meteor’s entry parameters. This can be leveraged as a trigger for future high-resolution instrumentation.

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