7LEpaper3

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FORWARD TRANSMISSION FROM METEOR IONIZATION

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AVERAGE

Fre. 2. Average hourly count for Ist and 16th days of each month between hours shown to determine

time of minimum count.

total number of occurrences versus duration
is plotted in Fig. 5. A substantial number of
these long duration signals were observed
and it seems impossible to associate these
with any object as transient as a meteor.
Many of them appear as pairs or triplets
with spacings of 80 to 150 min which seems
to indicate that the object responsible has
made two. or three successive passes at reg-
ular intervals. This seems to strengthen the
idea that the cause is probably satellites
and investigation of a selected few has

shown that satellites Echo I and Pegasus I
were in the area at the time.

A chronological plot of this phenomena
is shown in Fig. 4A. The large number oc-
curring during the Leonid shower period is
outstanding while the Geminid shower per-
iod appears to produce a series of long
duration signals spread over several weeks.
Tt is inferred from this that when the Earth
encounters a major meteor belt a significant
number of these objects become temporary
natural satellites of the Earth.