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Western University

Theses/Dissertations

2014

Direct simulation Monte Carlo

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Fragmentation And Wake Formation In Faint Meteors: Implications For The Structure And Ablation Of Small Meteoroids, Edward Stokan Dec 2014

Fragmentation And Wake Formation In Faint Meteors: Implications For The Structure And Ablation Of Small Meteoroids, Edward Stokan

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Meteors with peak magnitudes fainter than +2 are typically called faint meteors, resulting from the atmospheric entry and ablation of meteoroids less massive than 10-4 kg. The processes of luminous wake formation and fragmentation, which occur during ablation, are poorly understood for faint meteors, and are important constraints for models of meteoroid structure. The goal of this work is to improve understanding of these processes through analysis of high-resolution intensified video observations, and creation of a detailed meteoroid ablation model.

In the first part of this work, thirty faint meteors observed with the Canadian Automated Meteor Observatory (CAMO) are …