By: Josh Seidman
In ancient times Meteors were referred to as shooting stars, or stars falling from the heavens. These events had religious significance to many of the societies of the time period. While the name shooting star has stuck over the years, Meteors are not stars at all.
Meteors can brighten even the darkest of nights due to the friction that is created between the descending piece of rock and the earth's atmosphere. MARIACHI uses the Radio Cosmic Ray Scatter (RCRS) stations, which are a part of the experiment's Radar component, to detect the presence of these cosmic fireballs.
As a meteor travels through the earth's atmosphere it vaporizes which produces an ionization cloud. During a certain period of time the cloud can be used as a reflector for radio waves between 50 to 200 MHz. The design and setup for Detecting meteors is quite basic and simple. All the setup requires is an antennae, a radio receiver, a computer and some connecting cables.
Currently: The antenna is connected to a Winradio 313i receiver that is inside the building. This receiver is a very low noise receiver. So far we could only run in windows. Some of the participants here are looking into using a new software to analyze the meteor data. This software is called R-Software.
Many of the MARIACHI members have high hopes for this software due to the amout of diversity it has shown. "Physicists are typically very particular with the type of technology they use," said Helio Takai, a senior physicist at Borrkhaven. "Usually the programs they use can only be used by physicists. R is one of the first times chemists, biologists, physicists are all using the same software for their research and data analysis."
MARIACHI is in the process of teaching R to some of its participants in the hopes that by the end of the 2007 summer we will be able to analyze the meteor data using R instead of having to use Microsoft Excel. "R simply gives you a wider variety in terms of statistical and graphical analysis then Excel does," said Takai.
More information to come...
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