Meteoroid flux density workhop - 20-22 Sep 2016

Introduction

We held a "Meteoroid Flux Density Workshop" from 20-22 Sep 2016 at ESA/ESTEC, The Netherlands. The goal of this workshop was to exchange views on how to best determine flux densities, mainly from optical meteor observations. The participants exchanged information on how they determine fluxes, we discussed requirements from modelers, velocity distributions, and identified open questions.

Participants

Rhiannon Blaauw, Bill Cooke, Althea Moorhead (NASA, US); Margaret Campbell-Brown (UWO, Cananda); Esther Drolshagen, Theresa Ott (Univ. Oldenburg, Germany); Galina Ryabova (Tomsk Univ., Russia); Francois Colas (Paris Obs., France); Rachel Soja (IRS, Stuttgart, Germany); Gerhard Drolshagen, Mark Millinger, Detlef Koschny, Sam Leakey, Regina Rudawska, Joe Zender (ESA/ESTEC, The Netherlands)

Conclusions

The group agrees that we have to compare our algorithms and share data. Opportunities to compare sporadic and shower models and validate flux density determination algorithms have been identified between the participants.

We identified as a main uncertainty the luminous efficiency of meteoroids. More work needs to be performed to better constrain this parameter (e.g. laboratory measurements, measurements of non-fragmenting meteoroids where deceleration is visible).

Further work is necessary to determine meteoroid velocity distributions.

In-situ data is important to get a 'reference point' for the flux densities. In particular outside Earth orbit additional data would be needed. In-situ data from a large size detector (> 1 m^2) with reliable velocity distribution is lacking.

New interplanetary meteoroid models are well underway both at NASA (Meteoroid Engineering Model MEM) and ESA (Interplanetary Meteoroid Environment Model IMEM).

Presentations

Observational biases (M. Campbell-Brown)
Luminous efficiencies (M. Campbell-Brown)
Current activities within ESA's Meteor Research Group (D. Koschny)
Flux density determination as done by ESA's Meteor Resarch Group (D. Koschny)