Abstract
The distribution of meteor magnitudes is usually supposed to be described by power laws. However, this relationship is not able to model the whole data set, and the parameters are considered to be dependent on the magnitude intervals. We adopt a statistical distribution derived from Tsallis non-extensive statistical mechanics which is able to model the whole magnitude range. We combined meteor data from various sources, ranging from telescopic meteors to lunar impactors. Our analysis shows that the probability distribution of magnitudes of International Meteor Organization (IMO) and Meteor Observation and Recovery Project data are similar. The distribution of IMO visual magnitudes indicates that 2.4 ± 0.5 per cent of the meteors of a shower may be telescopic (m > 6). We note that the distribution of duration of lunar flashes follows a power law, and a comparison with the distribution of meteor showers suggests the occurrence of observational bias. The IMO sporadic meteor distribution also seems to be influenced by observational factors.
Author
Betzler, A. S.; Borges, E. P.
Journal
Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society: Letters
Paper Publication Date
February 2015
Paper Type
Astrostatistics