Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Bulk Density Of Small Meteoroids, Jean-Baptiste Kikwaya Eluo

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

The purpose of our work is to determine the bulk density of meteoroids. Unlike previous works which focused either on the dynamical properties of the meteoroids (deceleration), ignoring fragmentation; or on fitting solely the lightcurves, neglecting the dynamics of the meteoroids, we use both the photometry and astrometry to constrain our model. Our model, based on the dustball model, considers the meteoroid to be a collection of grains held together by a lower boiling point 'glue'. It uses conservation of energy and momentum to model the change in velocity and the light production as a function of time. The free …