著者

大西 浩次 柳沢 俊史 鳥居 研一 小浜 光洋

出版者

長野工業高等専門学校

雑誌

長野工業高等専門学校紀要 (ISSN:02861909)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.38, pp.87-94, 2004-06-30

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McNaught and Asher (2001) predicted the Leonids Meteor Storm in 2001 due to the 4-rev (1866 yr.) and 9-rev (1699 yr) dust trails of the Leonids. To measure the flux and magnitude distribution of very faint meteors, we performed deep imaging telescopic observations with the cooled CCD camera toward the radiant points of the Leonids. We observed the Leonids meteor storm Nov.18 UT 2001, and succeeded to separate the radiant points due to the 4-rev and 9-rev dust trails (Yanagisawa et al. 2003, Torii et al. 2003) and we also succeeded to detect the faint meteors under 10 magnitudes (Kohama et al. 2003). The flux of faint meteors increases with the population index of 2.4, and the flux was obtained as (4.2±2.1)×10^<-4>km^<-2>s^<-1>(mag≦+12). We have found no apparent cutoff of the flux at brighter than~12 magnitude. The size of meteoroid of 10th magnitude meteor is a several tenth μm. Such small meteoroids are not the meteoroids of 4-rev (1866 yr.) and 9-rev (1699 yr) dust trails, because it is considered that they cannot return around the orbit of dust trail due to the solar radiation pressure. Thus we have to consider the new physical mechanism to create such small meteoroids. To established the property of faint meteor distribution, we also performed the deep imaging telescopic observation at the duration of the Leonids 2002 and 2003. This paper describes the detailed observation circumstances of Leonids 2001, 2002, and 2003 and the preliminary result of faint meteor distribution of Leonids.