The Incidence of Meteor Particles Upon the Earth

Abstract

Radio echo rates for both shower and sporadic meteors, measured at Adelaide with the 27 Mcls C.W. equipment, are applied to the calculation of the incident flux of meteors above limiting brightnesses in the range MR < + 7·5. On the hypothesis of a strongly velocity-dependent ionizing probability, reached after a critical evaluation of the observational material, the meteor flux above prescribed limiting meteor particle masses, and the space densities of meteor particles, are also calculated. These fluxes and densities agree reasonably well with independent evaluations from visual meteor rates. The amount of meteoric matter falling on the whole Earth per day within particle mass limits 10?1 to 10?4 g, for sporadic meteors and some showers, is also estimated.