WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN AN UNDERDENSE AND AN OVERDENSE METEOR TRAIL?
The exact answer depends upon what you mean by your question. An overdense burn requires a larger meteor, produces a much more densely ionized trail, and produces a much stronger, specular reflection than an underdense burn. More specifically, “Underdense trails are those wherein the electron density is low enough so that the incident wave passes through the trail and the trail can be considered as an array of independent scatterers. Overdense trails are those wherein the electron density is high enough to prevent complete penetration of the incident wave and to cause reflection of waves in the same sense that the ordinary ionospheric reflections occur. A rough sorting of trails into these two categories can be done on the basis of trail lifetime or duration.” (Ionospheric Radio Propagation, U. S. Department of Commerce Monograph 80, 1965, p. 356). Cf. The W4LTU article, above.
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