MARIACHI and AMS ltd. Tie the Knot

By:Josh Seidman

In the recent past, there have been several notable unions between major corporate giants. Two of the more notable events were the fusing of AT&T with Cingular, and the combining of Exxon with Mobile. For the MARIACHI project a union of this sort was proposed on June 21, 2007. On this day MARIACHI took a major step in forming a collaboration with the American Meteor Society (AMS ltd.).

To iron out the details of this arrangement the executive director and head of AMS ltd. and a former professor at SUNY Geneseo, David Meisel, paid a visit to BNL where he met with MARIACHI leader, Helio Takai. The two individuals discussed several topics, some of which were general facts about Meteors and meteor detection, and possible improvements that could be made to the MARIACHI radar setup.

"MARIACHI will supply the array of various antennaes to gather the data," said Takai. "And, AMS will take care of the computer analysis. It's the perfect marriage."

The peak of the 1998 Leonid meteor shower (rich in bright fireballs), shown in a four-hour time exposure through a fisheye lens, and taken by Juraj Toth of Modra Observatory. Link

Meisel and his associates are conducting a plethora of experiments that are examining the various aspects of meteors. The AMS ltd. use optical meteor tracking, backwards scattering, forward scattering, and many other processes for analyzing meteor activity.

Over the years, Meisel and AMS ltd. have gathered pages worth of data on meteor activity. Back in 1991 Meisel published a 19 page paper entitled, Statistical properties of meteors from a simple, passive forward scatter system, that analyzed one day's worth of data out of four year's worth of information. "I just wanted to show the network that an amateur group can produce science," said Meisel. "When we were done with the paper, we had milked every bit of science out of that one day."

Recently, AMS ltd. has gathered about two million meteor related events using forward scattering. Meisel believes that among this data could lie evidence that supports the claim that radar technology can be used to observe the passage of cosmic rays. This information, if found, would go a long way in aiding MARIACHI in gaining support for the research, and in the research itself.

Currently: MARIACHI is using a system of bi-static Radar that employs a forward scattering technique in order to search for echo from the ionization trails produced by cosmic ray showers, meteors, and lightning. "When you first get into the game you use forward scattering," Meisel said. "It's inexpensive and any person from the street can get into the meteor watching field if they want to."

One of the issues with using forward scattering to detect meteors is that a lot of the meteor activity that exists occurs in an area outside of what is called a "meteor zone." "There is a meteor zone where nature allows us to measure and study meteors," Meisel said. Some antennaes, depending on their quality, can observe a wider meteor zone then other antennaes can.

Antennaes that use forward scattering have a hard time recoding the data of minor meteors, as well as big meteors. The minor meteor showers occur at too great an altitude for the forward scattering to detect them. The big meteors, or fireballs, are about two kilometers acroos and 15 kilometers long. These fireballs produce reflections that aren't cylindrical, which is the type of reflection that the MARIACHI radar setup can detect. Their reflections are typically a parabolic node. "Basically, they create too much noise and interference with themselves for forward scattering to read," said Meisel.

This exceptionally bright fireball trail was photographed with a fish-eye camera at a Czech Republic station of the European Fireball Network on January 21, 1999. Link

To combat this issue, Meisel mentioned building a Yagi Antennae which is a type of antennae that can balance an electric signal and assist in widening the meteor zone for this experiment. He also mentioned using a wavelet spectra, which would enable the MARIACHI participants to see all of the minor meteor occurrences that aren't seen in the data. "The wavelets press the noise into the right band so you can read all of the minor showers," said the AMS ltd. executive director.

Another suggestion that Meisel made in terms of MARIACHI's radar setup that would greatly improve the effectiveness of the overall research was that in order to obtain the greatest accuracy in the data collected gathered from the radar setup, the antennaes need to be mounted at the higest possible altitude.

For this type of experiment it is ideal to obtain reflections of 90 degrees from the ionization trails. This will give the researchers a better signal to noise ration, as well as much less sporatic scattering of the radio waves off of the reflective surface said Meisel. The AMS ltd. executive director said it is best to allign the antennaes with the appropriate "hotspots" created by the relationship setup between the radio station and the antennae.

"You don't have to aim the antennaes directly at the hotspots because most of the antennae patterns are very broad," said Meisel. "But, aiming the antennaes at these locations will give you a better chance of recording a greater amount of meteor activity."

After this initial day of interaction, everything appeared to be running smoothly between MARIACHI and AMS ltd. However, only time will reveal if this relationship will continue to blossom into a healthy union or if it will end as a dreaded one night stand.

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