Sporadic Meteors

This image is typical of sporadic (that is, largely random) meteor in-fall activity. The record begins at local time 0300 and data acquisition rate of 400 samples/second.

The heavy band underlying the meteor spikes is energy received because of scattering in the ionosphere and, perhaps, a large volume of meteoric dust entering the atmosphere. This record was made several days before the 2001 Leonid main activity. We have noted a contribution to continuous scattering of this sort on previous occasions when a major shower approached.