ACPD Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics Discussions ACPD 1680-7375 Copernicus GmbH Göttingen, Germany 10.5194/acpd-4-1425-2004 Radar and optical leonids Brosch N. 1 Polishook D. 1 Helled R. 1 Schijvarg S. 1 Rosenkrantz M. 2 Beverly and Raymond Sackler Faculty of Exact Sciences, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv 69978, Israel Radar Division, ELTA Ltd., POB 330, Ashdod 77102, Israel 09 03 2004 4 2 1425 1447 This is an open-access article ditributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. This article is available from http://www.atmos-chem-phys-discuss.net/4/1425/2004/acpd-4-1425-2004.html The full text article is available as a PDF file from http://www.atmos-chem-phys-discuss.net/4/1425/2004/acpd-4-1425-2004.pdf

We present joint optical-radar observations of meteors collected near the peak of the leonid activity in 2002. We show four examples of joint detections with a large, phased array L-band radar and with intensified video cameras. The general characteristic of the radar-detected optical meteors is that they show the radar detection below the termination of the optical meteor. Therefore, at least some radar events associated with meteor activity are neither head echoes nor trail echoes, but probably indicate the formation of "charged clouds" after the visual meteor is extinguished.