The problem of linking minor meteor showers to their parent bodies: initial considerations

Efforts to link minor meteor showers to their parent bodies have been hampered both by the lack of high-accuracy orbits for weak showers and the incompleteness of our sample of potential parent bodies. The Canadian Meteor Orbital Radar (CMOR) has accumulated over one million meteor orbits. From this large data set, the existence of weak showers and the accuracy of the mean orbits of these showers can be improved. The ever-growing catalogue of near-Earth asteroids (NEAs) provides the complimentary data set for the linking procedure. By combining a detailed examination of the background of sporadic meteors near the orbit in question (which the radar data makes possible) and by computing the statistical significance of any shower association (which the improved NEA sample allows) any proposed shower–parent link can be tested much more thoroughly than in the past. Additional evidence for the links is provided by a single-station meteor radar at the CMOR site which can be used to dispel confusion between very weak showers and statistical fluctuations in the sporadic background. The use of these techniques and data sets in concert will allow us to confidently link some weak streams to their parent bodies on a statistical basis, while at the same time showing that previously identified minor showers have little or no activity and that some previously suggested linkages may simply be chance alignments.     

Is 2329 Orthos a dead comet?

Probably most meteor showers have a cometary origin. Investigation of Near-Earth asteroids' orbital evolution to determine whether they have related meteor showers is necessary to determine which asteroids evolved from comets. The results of calculations show that asteroid Orthos' orbit is an octuple Earth-crosser. Therefore, if Orthos has an old meteoroid stream it may produce eight meteor showers observable on the Earth. The existence of four Orthos' Northern meteor showers is confirmed by our search in the published catalogues of meteor radiants and orbits or in the archives of the IAU Meteor Data Center (Lund, Sweden).     

The Dynamics of Low-Perihelion Meteoroid Streams

The Canadian Meteor Orbit Radar (CMOR) has collected information on a number of weak meteor showers that have not been well characterized in the literature. A subsample of these showers (1) do not show a strong orbital resemblance to any known comets or asteroids, (2) have highly inclined orbits, (3) are at low perihelion distances ( AU) and (4) are at small semimajor axes (<2 AU). Though one might conclude that the absence of a parent object could be the result of its disruption, it is unclear how this relatively inaccessible (dynamically speaking) region of phase space might have been populated by parents in the first place. It will be shown that the Kozai secular resonance and/or Poynting–Robertson drag can modify meteor stream orbits rapidly (on time scales comparable to a precession cycle) and may be responsible for placing some of these streams into their current locations. These same effects are also argued to act on these streams so as to contribute to the high-ecliptic latitude north and south toroidal sporadic meteor sources. There remain some differences between the simple model results presented here and observations, but there may be no need to invoke a substantial population of high-inclination parents for the observed high-inclination meteoroid streams with small perihelion distances.     

Orthos' meteor showers

Probably the majority of meteor showers has a cometary origin. Investigation of Near-Earth asteroids' orbital evolution to determine whether they have related meteor showers are necessary to determine which asteroids evolved from comets. The results of calculations show that asteroid Orthos' orbit is an octuple Earth-crosser. Therefore, if Orthos has an old meteoroid stream it may produce eight meteor showers observable on the Earth. The existence of four Orthos' Northern meteor showers is confirmed by our search in the published catalogues of meteor radiants and orbits or in the archives of the IAU Meteor Data Center (Lund, Sweden).     

Is 2329 Orthos a dead comet?

Probably most meteor showers have a cometary origin. Investigation of Near-Earth asteroids' orbital evolution to determine whether they have related meteor showers is necessary to determine which asteroids evolved from comets. The results of calculations show that asteroid Orthos' orbit is an octuple Earth-crosser. Therefore, if Orthos has an old meteoroid stream it may produce eight meteor showers observable on the Earth. The existence of four Orthos' Northern meteor showers is confirmed by our search in the published catalogues of meteor radiants and orbits or in the archives of the IAU Meteor Data Center (Lund, Sweden).     

Statistical model of meteor streams III. Stream search among 19303 radio meteors

Using a computerized technique of stream search, based on the statistical model of meteor streams, we have detected 72 additional streams in a sample of 19303 radio meteor orbits. The streams are found to have a tendency to cluster, partly along the ecliptic and partly in high-inclination orbits. Also noticed are specific relations among the detected streams, such as stream pairs, stream branches, and twin showers. A very probable association of a prominent stream, the a Capricornids, with the minor planet Adonis has been established, and possible associations of several streams with comets and minor planets of the Apollo and Albert types are also discussed. Identification of the detected radio streams with previously known streams is presented, and plans for future work are briefly outlined.     

Meteor shower detection with density‐based clustering

We present a new method to detect meteor showers using the density‐based spatial clustering of applications with noise algorithm (DBSCAN; Ester et al. 1996 ). The DBSCAN algorithm is a modern cluster detection algorithm that is well suited to the problem of extracting meteor showers from all‐sky camera data because of its ability to efficiently extract clusters of different shapes and sizes from large data sets. We apply this shower detection algorithm on a data set that contains 25,885 meteor trajectories and orbits obtained from the NASA All‐Sky Fireball Network and the Southern Ontario Meteor Network (SOMN). Using a distance metric based on solar longitude, geocentric velocity, and Sun‐centered ecliptic radiant, we find 25 strong cluster detections and six weak detections in the data, all of which are good matches to known showers. We include measurement errors in our analysis to quantify the reliability of cluster occurrence and the probability that each meteor belongs to a given cluster. We validate our method through false‐positive/negative analysis and with a comparison to an established shower detection algorithm.     

Search for New Parent Bodies of Meteoroid Streams Among Comets. I. Showers of Comets 126P/1996 P1 and 161P/2004 V2 with Radiants on Southern Sky

We deal with theoretical meteoroid streams the parent bodies of which are two Halley-type comets in orbits situated at a relatively large distance from the orbit of Earth: 126P/1996 P1 and 161P/2004 V2. For two perihelion passages of each comet in the far past, we model the theoretical stream and follow its dynamical evolution until the present. We predict the characteristics of potential meteor showers according to the dynamical properties of theoretical particles currently approaching the orbit of the Earth. Our dynamical study reveals that the comet 161P/2004 V2 could have an associated Earth-observable meteor shower, although no significant number of theoretical particles are identified with real, photographic, video, or radar meteors. However, the mean radiant of the shower is predicted on the southern sky (its declination is about −23°) where a relatively low number of real meteors has been detected and, therefore, recorded in the databases used. The shower of 161P has a compact radiant area and a relatively large geocentric velocity of ∼53 km s⁻¹. A significant fraction of particles assumed to be released from comet 126P also cross the Earth’s orbit and, eventually, could be observed as meteors. However, their radiant area is largely dispersed (declination of radiants spans from about +60° to the south pole) and, therefore, mixed with the sporadic meteor background. An identification with real meteors is practically impossible.     

A method for the determination of meteor stream membership based on the results of the single-station television observations used at INASAN

Massive television observations of meteors aimed at verifying the existing and finding new meteor streams create the task of the reliable preliminary determination of the detected meteor membership in a particular known stream. The mostly widely used method of meteor identification is connected with the estimation of the distance between the great circle of the meteor and the point of the examined radiant. Often observers perform this estimation without checking the possibility that the same meteor belongs to another stream. When several streams occur simultaneously, many meteors can be members of two or more streams. When the determination of the meteor membership is done in a subjective way, it may lead to an overestimation of strong streams’ and an underestimation of weak streams’ activity. In this work, we describe a method and algorithm for the determination of the meteor membership in known streams which were tested using real television observations and were successfully used at INASAN. This algorithm is almost completely automatic and allows for the obtainment of additional information regarding meteor streams. We also show some results of the processing of 2254 meteors observations obtained with the FAVOR camera from July 31, 2006 to October 21, 2006 using the proposed method. The work is part of the program for the creation of the Verified Catalogue of Meteor Streams.     

Microshower Structure of the Meteor Complex

Meteor radar observations of ionized trails in the Earth’s atmosphere provide observations that do not depend on weather conditions and time of day and provide good statistics for analysis. Further development in the new quasitomographic analysis of the goniometric data of the Kazan meteoric radar has revealed a number of very weak meteoric streams with rates of more than 5–6 meteors per day. In addition to the known large meteor showers, we have found up to as many as 1000 small showers per month that we have named microshowers. We shall operationally define a microshower as the minimal meteoric stream which can be detected with the Kazan meteoric radar while quasitomographic procedures of processing interferometer data are used.     

The P/Halley Stream: Meteor Showers on Earth, Venus and Mars

We have simulated the formation and evolution of comet 1P/Halley’s meteoroid stream by ejecting particles from the nucleus 5000 years ago and propagating them forward to the present. Our aim is to determine the existence and characteristics of associated meteor showers at Mars and Venus and compare them with 1P/Halley’s two known showers at the Earth. We find that one shower should be present at Venus and two at Mars. The number of meteors in those atmospheres would, in general, be less than that at the Earth. The descending node branch of the Halley stream at Mars exhibits a clumpy structure. We identified at least one of these clumps as particles trapped in the 7:1 mean motion resonance with Jupiter, potentially capable of producing meteor ourbursts of ZHR∼1000 roughly once per century.     

Meteor Showers Associated with the Taurid Complex Asteroids

Recent theoretical and observational work has shown that the asteroids belonging to the Taurid meteoroid complex have a cometary nature. If so, then they might possess related meteoroid streams producing meteor showers in the Earth atmosphere. We studied the orbital evolution of ten numbered Taurid complex asteroids by the Halphen-Goryachev method. It turned out that all of these asteroids are quadruple crossers relative to the Earth's orbit. Therefore their proposed meteoroid streams may in theory each produce four meteor showers. The theoretical orbital elements and geocentric radiants of these showers are determined and compared with the available observational data. The existence of the predicted forty meteor showers of the ten Taurid complex asteroids is confirmed by a search of the published catalogues of observed meteor shower radiants and orbits, and of the archives of the IAU Meteor Data Center (Lund). The existence of meteor showers associated with the Taurid Complex Asteroids confirms that, most likely, these asteroids are extinct comets. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Frequency of hyperbolic and interstellar meteoroids

Hyperbolic meteor orbits from the catalog of 64,650 meteors observed by the multistation video meteor network located in Japan (SonotaCo 2009) have been investigated with the aim of determining the relation between the frequency of hyperbolic and interstellar meteors. The proportion of hyperbolic meteors in the data decreased significantly (from 11.58% to 3.28%) after a selection of quality orbits, which shows its dependence on the quality of observations. Initially, the hyperbolic orbits were searched for meteors unbound due to planetary perturbation. It was determined that 22 meteors from the 7489 hyperbolic orbits in the catalog (and 2 from the selection of the orbits with the highest quality) had had a close encounter with a planet, none of which, however, produced essential changes in their orbits. Similarly, the fraction of hyperbolic orbits in the data, which could be hyperbolic by reason of a meteor's interstellar origin, was determined to be at most 3.9 × 10^?2. From the statistical point of view, the vast majority of hyperbolic meteors in the database have definitely been caused by inaccuracy in the velocity determination. This fact does not necessarily assume great measurement errors, since, especially near the parabolic limit, a small error in the value of the heliocentric velocity of a meteor can create an artificial hyperbolic orbit that does not really exist. The results show that the remaining 96% of meteoroids with apparent hyperbolic orbits belong to the solar system meteoroid population. This is also supported by their high abundance (about 50%) among the meteor showers.     

The parent of the Quadrantid meteoroid stream

The Quadrantid meteor shower is one of the major showers that produces reliable displays every January. However, it is unique amongst the major showers in still not having its parent uniquely identified. One of the reasons for this may be because the stream, and presumably the parent, lies in a region of the Solar system where near-resonant motion with Jupiter, coupled with potential close encounters, is possible. Such a combination can lead to a rapid dynamical evolution of an orbit. In particular, it may be possible that the orbit of the parent both satisfies the condition for a close encounter and is in resonant motion, while most of the meteoroids cannot satisfy both conditions. This results in the parent evolving away from the bulk of the stream.
To date, two suggestions have been made regarding possible parents for the Quadrantid stream, these being Comet 1491 I and Comet 96P/Machholz. The argument in favour of the first named being the parent is because of the general similarity between the orbits around 1491. The argument for comet 96P/Machholz being the parent is based on the similarity in orbital evolution coupled with a similarity in orbits phase-shifted by 2000 yr. In this paper we suggest that on both counts asteroid 5496 (1973 NA) is more similar to the Quadrantids, and that even if 5496 is not the actual parent in the strict sense that meteoroids are currently being ejected, it is either likely to be a fragment of the parent or the dormant remains of the parent.     

Orbital structure of the meteor complex according to radar observations in Kazan. 1. Apparent distributions of aphelia

The results of an analysis of the orbital structure of the meteor complex accessible for radar observations at northern midlatitudes are reported. Experimentally, the study is based on the long-term monitoring of the influx of meteor matter into the Earth’s atmosphere performed with the meteor radar of Kazan State University starting from 1986. The study uses a discrete quasi-tomographic method to measure the radiants and velocities of meteor showers based on goniometric data of the meteor radar and diffraction measurements of meteor velocities. The discretization of the detection environment—in particular, in terms of velocity—is shown to result in no substantial loss of measurement accuracy. The error of the measured velocity of the shower does not exceed 1.5 km/s for a standard deviation of a single velocity measurement equal to 3 km/s. Microshower representation is used with microshowers either representing the correlated part of the sporadic complex or being partial streams of major and minor showers, or fragments of the dust environment of minor bodies passing by Earth or falling onto it. The data of measurements made over the entire annual cycle are used to construct combined maps of the distribution of the observed 2263 microshowers (a total of 22 604 orbits) by their inclination, aphelion distance, and longitudes of the ascending nodes of their orbits. The observing conditions are shown to have a significant effect on the parameters of the distribution of aphelion distances for different months, and the corresponding distributions for prograde and retrograde orbits are shown to differ fundamentally. A specific feature of such distribution maps is that they allow uniform representation of both meteor showers and irregularities of the sporadic complex.     

THE CORE OF THE QUADRANTID METEOROID STREAM IS TWO HUNDRED YEARS OLD

The Quadrantids are one of the most active annual meteor showers and have a number of unusual features. One is a sharp brief maximum, 12–14 h in length. A second is the Quadrantids, relatively recent appearance in our skies, the first observation having likely been made in 1835. Until recently no likely parent with a similar orbit had been observed and previous investigators concluded that the stream was quite old, with the stream’s recent appearance and sharp peak attributed to a recent fortuitous convergence of meteoroid orbits. The recent discovery of the near-Earth asteroid 2003 EH1 on an orbit very similar to that of the Quadrantids has almost certainly uncovered the parent body of this stream. From the simulations of the orbit of this body and of meteoroids released at intervals from it in the past, we find that both the sharp peak and recent appearance of the Quadrantids can most easily be explained assuming meteoroids were ejected in substantial numbers near 1800 AD.     

The Changes of the Orbital Elements and Estimation of the Initial Velocities of Stream Meteoroids Ejected from Comets and Asteroids

The values of the initial velocity of the meteoroids ejected from the parent bodies are small and as a result, the most of the young meteoroid streams have similar orbits to their parent bodies. Assuming that the members of the observed meteor stream evolved under the influence of gravitational perturbations mostly, Pittich [1991, Proceedings of the Conference on Dynamic of Small Bodies of the Solar System, Polish-Slovak Conference, Warsaw, October 25–28, 1988, pp. 55-61], Williams [1996, Earth, Moon, Planets 72, 321–326; 2001, Proceedings of the Meteoroids 2001 conference, Kiruna, Sweden, August 6–10, 2001, pp. 33–42] estimated the ejection velocities of the stream meteoroids. Equation relating the ejection velocity Δυ and the change Δa of the semi-major axis, Williams (2001), was applied with two slightly different variations. In the first one (M1) as Δa the difference between the mean orbit of the stream and the orbit of the parent body was substituted, in the second one (M2), as Δa the dispersion of semi-major axes around the mean orbit of the stream was used. The results obtained by these two methods are not free from discrepancies, partly explained by the particular orbital structure of the stream. Kresak [1992, Contrib. Astron. Obs. Skalnate Pleso 22, 123–130] strongly criticized the attempts to determine the initial velocities of the stream using the statistics of the meteor orbits. He argued that this is essentially impossible, because the dispersion of the initial velocities are masked by much larger measuring errors and by the accumulated effects of planetary perturbations. In our paper, we study the reliability of M1 and M2 methods. We made a numerical experiment consisting of formation of several meteor streams and their dynamical evolution over 5000 years. We ejected meteoroids particles from the comets: 1P/Halley, 2P/Encke, 55P/Tempel-Tuttle, 109P/Swift-Tuttle and from minor planets (3200) Phaethon and 2002 SY₅₀. During the integration, the ejection velocities were estimated using both M1 and M2 methods. The results show that the velocities obtained by M1 method are unstable: too high or too low, when compared with the known ejection velocities at the time of the stream formation. On the other hand, the velocities obtained using M2 method are too small, mostly. In principle, M2 estimates the dispersion of the distribution of the ejection velocities around the mean value, not the mean value itself. Applying more accurate Equation relating Δυ and Δa we decreased the bias of the results, but not their variation observed during the evolution of the streams and the parent bodies. We have found that the variability of the estimated ejection velocities was caused mainly by the gravitational changes of the semi-major axis and eccentricity of the parent body. In brief, we have found that the reliability of the results obtained by M1 or M2 method are low, and have to be used with great care.     

Meteors in the IAU Meteor Data Center on Hyperbolic Orbits

The hyperbolic meteor orbits among the 4,581 photographic and 62,906 radar meteors of the IAU MDC have been analysed using statistical methods. It was shown that the vast majority of hyperbolic orbits has been caused by the dispersion of determined velocities. The large proportion of hyperbolic orbits among the known meteor showers strongly suggests the hyperbolicity of the meteors is not real. The number of apparent hyperbolic orbits increases inversely proportional to the difference between the mean heliocentric velocity of meteor shower and the parabolic velocity limit. The number of hyperbolic meteors in the investigated catalogues does not, in any case, represent the number of interstellar meteors in observational data. The apparent hyperbolicity of these orbits is caused by a high spread in velocity determination, shifting a part of the data through the parabolic limit.     

The IAU Meteor Shower Nomenclature Rules

The International Astronomical Union at its 2006 General Assembly in Prague has adopted a set of rules for meteor shower nomenclature, a working list with designated names (with IAU numbers and three-letter codes), and established a Task Group for Meteor Shower Nomenclature in Commission 22 (Meteors and Interplanetary Dust) to help define which meteor showers exist from well defined groups of meteoroids from a single parent body.     

The orbit of the Kappa Cygnid and related meteor streams

A study of the Kappa Cygnid and other minor streams of the August epoch is presented based on a computer search in a sample of 3518 photographic meteoroid orbits. Four different meteoroid streams with radiants in Cygnus, Draco and Lyra, were found. Three of these: the Kappa Cygnids, the Alpha Lyrids and the Zeta Draconids are identified with meteor showers reported by nineteenth century visual observers. The fourth stream, the August Lyrids, consists of six meteors with radiants in Lyra centered on = 277°.6, = 46°.2. No previous visual reports of this stream have been found. It is interesting to note that all four meteoroid streams are coincident in time; their orbits are all of short period and they all have very nearly the same orientation of semi-major axis.