HR: 10:35h
AN: SA22A-02    [Abstracts]
TI: Charged Dust in the Polar Winter Mesosphere
AU: * Gelinas, L J
EM: Lynette.J.Gelinas@aero.org
AF: The Aerospace Corporation, PO Box 92957, M2/260, Los Angeles, CA 90009-2957 United States
AU: Lynch, K A
EM: lynch@birkeland.dartmouth.edu
AF: Dartmouth College, Dept. of Physics and Astronomy, Hanover, NH 03755 United States
AU: Kelley, M C
EM: mikek@ece.cornell.edu
AF: Cornell University, Dept. of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Ithaca, NY 14853 United States
AU: Collins, R L
EM: rlc@gi.alaska.edu
AF: University of Alaska, Fairbanks, Geophysical Institute, Fairbanks, AK 99775 United States
AB: In this paper we discuss the behavior and role of meteoric dust in the Earth's mesosphere using results from six instrumented sounding rockets. Each of the sounding rocket payloads was instrumented with detectors designed to measure the charged component of the mesospheric dust population. The launches occurred at Poker Flat Research Range on three separate nights at various local times: the first rocket was launched near midnight on March 6, 2002, the second set of three rockets launched in the early morning hours of March 15, 2002, and the last two rockets launched in the early evening on March 17, 2005. Ground-based iron lidar was used to monitor the mesosphere during the launches. The dust layer appears to follow the motion of the mesospheric iron layer, as reported previously [Gelinas et al., 2005; Lynch et al., 2005]. The charged dust profiles from all six flights are generally similar in shape and number density, but small variations between the dust profiles, particularly from sequential flights, may be useful for studying dust charging processes and behavior in the mesosphere. Here we consider the extent to which steady-state dust charging models are able to explain the observed changes in the charged dust layer.
DE: 2400 IONOSPHERE (6929)
DE: 2435 Ionospheric disturbances
DE: 2461 Plasma interactions with dust and aerosols (7849)
SC: SPA-Aeronomy [SA]
MN: Fall Meeting 2005