Try Something New..?

We thought about putting this as a post for beginners, because other than the need for a connection to the Internet, no other equipment is needed. However, there are probably several of the more experienced members of the Club that haven't tried this out... so this is for everyone!

In this post, we're talking about meteor scatter.

The Perseid meteor shower appears to originate in Perseus

Many radio hams are aware of the annual meteor showers that occur at known points throughout the year, with names such as the Perseids, Eta Aquarids and Leonids (and others). These events show a steep rise in the number of meteors ionising the atmosphere - but first things first. What causes meteor showers?

The Natural History Museum gives this helpful description, meteor showers occur when Earth passes through streams of tiny pieces of debris left behind by comets and asteroids. The peak of a meteor shower occurs as we pass through the densest part of the debris stream, so we see the highest rate of meteors then.

It would be easy to think that the only time to make use of the ionised trail left by a meteor, is during these main events... but, it turns out that Earth's atmosphere is regularly hit by these tiny pieces of debris. The ionised trail left by meteors can reflect radio signals and their effect is available on a daily basis.

Graph showing the daily rhythm of meteors reflecting radio signals

Whilst meteors hit the atmosphere on a daily basis, there tends to be more opportunity for reflecting radio signals in the morning, which tails off early evening, before building up again, as the graph above shows. You can find out more about meteor counts at Sodankylä Geophysical Observatory website at https://www.sgo.fi/Data/RealTime/meteorRadar.php

At the bottom of that page on the SGO website (at least at the time of writing), is a plot of the last hours worth of meteors. This is another way to see just how active it has been in the last 60 minutes and also teh last one minute.

The meteor reflections recorded in the last hour (blue) and last minute (red)

Having seen that meteors are active all day, every day (to some extent), it would be good to actually see the effect. You don't need any equipment to get started with this! Instead head to the displays at https://ukmeteorbeacon.org/beaconclient/

Meteor 'pigs' seen on the display

This is fascinating! You're watching for the bright 'pings', as passing meteors reflect back the signals produced from the Nottingham 50.408MHz beacon. Ignore the slanting lines - they are caused by aircraft scatter (another useful phenomenon).

That's it for a very brief introduction into the world of meteor scatter - give it a try and see what you find...