Spectroscopy of small cometary particles

Abstract

Knowledge of chemical composition derived from the spectroscopy of small cometary meteoroids when they enter the Earth's atmosphere at high velocity and become visible as meteors is briefly summarized. For statistically reliable results it is necessary to have a large number of observations and this requires the photography of relatively faint meteors, which are considerably more numerous than the bright fireballs. The improvement in observational techniques and cameras has made it possible to extend the range of spectrographic data from cometary particles of mass between a kilogram and a gram down to those of only 0.01 or 0.001 grams in mass. The corresponding increase in the number-value of the statistics was from less than 100 data points to several 1000.