Lidar and Modeling Studies of the Mesospheric Iron and Sodium Layers
The mesospheric metals are believed to be the product of meteoric ablation. Very thin and brief layers observed in our lidar data, attributed to recently ablated meteors, are used to examine this hypothesis. The altitude distribution of these trails is compared to a model of meteoric deposition, meteor radar data, and average Fe and Na density profiles. The total meteoric influx is derived from our data and argued to be a lower limit on the actual meteoric influx.
University of Illinois - Urbana-Champaign
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University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign