The use of a large-aperture radio system for meteor studies

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Abstract
A large sampled-aperture antenna array has been used to investigate the structure of the radio wave field scattered by meteor trails. The experiment measured the phase and amplitude of the radio waves in the frequency range 20 to 30 MHz at 58 points distributed over an aperture of almost 1.2 km. The temporal changes in the structure of the scattered radiation clearly show the influence of distortion of the meteor trails by atmospheric winds, but are incompatible with the widely accepted model which attributes fading and anomalous decay times to the distortion of a single trail. The observations seem to imply the simultaneous existence of two or more trails but whether these trails are due to fragmentation of the meteoroid in the atmosphere or to simultaneous entry of independent meteoroids is not clear.

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