We report the serendipitous findings of 13 faint meteors and 44 artificial
space objects by Subaru SuprimeCam imaging observations during 11-16 August
2004. The meteors, at about 100km altitude, and artificial satellites/debris in
orbit, at 500km altitude or higher, were clearly discriminated by their
apparent defocused image sizes. CCD photometry of the 13 meteors, including 1
Perseid, 1 Aquarid, and 11 sporadic meteors, was performed. We defined a peak
video-rate magnitude by comparing the integrated photon counts from the
brightest portion of the track traversed within 33ms to those from a 0-mag star
during the same time duration. This definition gives magnitudes in the range
4.0< V_{vr} <6.4 and 4.1< I_{vr}<5.9 for these 13 meteors. The corresponding
magnitude for virtual naked-eye observers could be somewhat fainter especially
for the V-band observation, in which the [OI] 5577 line lasting about 1 sec as
an afterglow could contribute to the integrated flux of the present 5-10 min
CCD exposures. Although the spatial resolution is insufficient to resolve the
source size of anything smaller than about 1 m, we developed a new estimate of
the collisionally excited column diameter of these meteors. A diameter as small
as a few mm was derived from their collisionally excited photon rates, meteor
speed, and the volume density of the oxygen atoms at the 100km altitude. The
actual column diameter of the radiating zone, however, could be as large as few
100m because the excited atoms travel that distance before they emit forbidden
lines in 0.7 sec of its average lifetime. Among the 44 artificial space
objects, we confirmed that 17 were cataloged satellites/space debris.Comment: 14 pages, 13 figures, 5 tables, submitted to PAS