The SkiyMET radar is a long-term experiment, capable of detecting meteors in the upper atmosphere. The SkiYMet meteor radar tracks meteor trails to measure wind speed and the direction of the wind of the meteor as it burns up in the Earth’s atmosphere. Most meteors burn up in the atmosphere between 80km and 90km altitude.
The SkiYMet radar uses a single transmitter antenna that sends pulses of radio energy into the atmosphere to illuminate the sky. The five-receiver antenna detect reflections of the transmitters pulse that were reflected from ionised meteor trails and then uses the drifts and doppler shift to determine zonal and meridional winds at heights of 80-100km with height and time resolutions of ~2km and 1 hour.
The intensity of meteors varies but on average SkiYMet sees around four meteors a minute, but many more during meteor showers.
This instruments measures similar variables as the MF radar, through the tracking of middle-upper atmosphere winds and therefore completement each other in the study of the middle atmosphere and its coupling to space weather processes.
