Radio Observation of the 2001 Quadrantids
Data Collection and Analysis
I used the FM radio system described on my main page. The 2001 Quadrantid meteor shower showed a reasonably high rate of about 30-35 meteors per hour at its peak, higher than the background rate of sporadic meteors of about 5 meteors per hour. There was also significant activity in the days surrounding the peak. The activity rates were determined by the same computer program that I used for my 1998 Leonid and Geminid studies. It counts as meteor signals all peaks with an initial rise greater than 20% of the background in one second. This criterion prevents noise signals from being counted as meteors. See my main page for more details.
Rates for 2001 Quadrantids
The following graph shows the meteor count rates per hour that I measured for the 2001 Quadrantids. The graph shows the rates observed for the period starting at noon on January 2, 2001, and continuing through the Quadrantid peak for a sixty hour period.
Gallery of Events
The following is a gallery of selected meteor events during the period of the Quadrantid 2001 meteor shower. These events were selected because of their high amplitude (at least twice the background) or interesting shape. Some of the "fuzzy top" events arise from the radio waves interfering with each other after reflecting from an extended ionized region of the atmosphere. Some are fused peaks in which one meteor follows another in a short period. The time above each chart is for the center of the chart. The data points are at one second intervals, and there are 10 seconds per chart division, or one minute across the full chart.
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Summary
The 2001 Quadrantid meteor shower showed two radio peaks. One occurred between 3:00 AM and 4:00 AM EST on January 3, 2001, and the other occurred between 2:00 PM and 3:00 PM EST on the same day. There were other peaks just before and just after. The peak rate was about 30-35 meteors per hour.
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Comments and technical questions can be addressed to me care of my father, Devlin Gualtieri, at Honeywell Laboratory, Morristown, NJ.