Comparison of meteor shower observed by two collocated meteor radars at low latitudes

We present results in which we compare simultaneous meteor shower observations using two meteor radars located in Kunming, China (25.6°N, 103.8°E). These are the 37.5 MHz ‘all-sky’ Kunming meteor radar (KMMR) and the 53.1 MHz Kunming Stratospheric–Tropospheric ST/Meteor radar (KMST). We first explore the Southern Delta Aquariids (SDA) meteor shower, one of the most active annual sources in the southern hemisphere, as an example, and one with ambiguous radiant. From this, we propose a new approach to determine the azimuthal angular deviation from true north for the radars and find a result of 14.7° on the KMMR and less than 1° for the KMST. These results are used to correct the receiving antenna baseline of the meteor radars. After correcting for this in the Horizontal Coordinate System of the KMMR, we find more than 2000 shower meteors originating from the radiant of Right Ascension (R.A.) =339.8° ± 2.7°, and declination (Dec.) = −16.9° ± 1.7° (J2000), and more than 1300 shower meteors from a region of R.A. = 339° ± 2.9°, Dec. = −16° ± 1.8° (J2000) from the KMST. A consistent finding between the radars was that SDA outbursts occur between UTC 1400 and 0100 with a geocentric velocity of ∼39 km/s. We then expended the period of investigation to 14 months to obtain a survey of meteor showers including the Geminids and Quadrantids. In this larger survey, 9 meteor showers were simultaneously detected by the two meteor radars, with good consistency on radiants and velocity. This demonstrates that it is possible to evaluate the angular deviation of any meteor radar in any specific period by using this new approach. We also found two previously unidentified meteor showers.