Search for Past Signs of October Ursae Majorids

A new meteroid stream—October Ursa Majorids—was announced by Japanese observers on Oct. 14–16, 2006 (Uehara et al. 2006). Its weak manifestation was detected among coincidental major meteor showers (N/S Taurids, Orionids), as its meteors radiated from a higher placed radiant on the northern sky. We have tried to find out previous displays of the stream throughout available meteor orbits databases, and among ancient celestial phenomena records. Although we got no obvious identification, there are some indications that it could be a meteor shower of cometary origin with weak/irregular activity, mostly overlayed by regular coincidental meteor showers. With a procedure based on D-criterion (Southworth and Hawkins 1963) we found a few records in IAU MDC database of meteor photographic orbits which fulfill common similarity limits, for October Ursae Majorids. However, their real association cannot be established, yet. With respect to the mean orbit of this stream, we suggest for its parent body a long-period comet.     

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.     

Video Observations of the 2006 Leonid Outburst

We carried out double station observations of the Leonid meteor shower outburst, which occurred in the morning hours of November 19, 2006. Using image-intensified cameras we recorded approximately 100 Leonid meteors. As predicted, the outburst was rich especially in fainter meteors. The activity profile shows that the peak of the outburst occurred at 4:40 ± 0:05 UT. The maximum reached flux was 0.03 meteoroids km⁻² hod⁻¹ for meteors brighter than +6.5 magnitude.     

Prospects for meteor shower activity in the venusian atmosphere

We investigate the possibility of detectable meteor shower activity in the atmosphere of Venus. We compare the Venus-approaching population of known periodic comets, suspected cometary asteroids and meteor streams with that of the Earth. We find that a similar number of Halley-type comets but a substantially lesser population of Jupiter family comets approach Venus. Parent bodies of prominent meteor showers that might occur at Venus have been determined based on minimum orbital distance. These are: Comets 1P/Halley, parent of the η Aquarid and Orionid streams at the Earth; 45P/Honda-Mrkos-Pajdusakova which currently approaches the venusian orbit to 0.0016 AU; three Halley-type comets (12P/Pons-Brooks, 27P/Crommelin and 122P/de Vico), all intercepting the planet's orbit within a 5-day arc in solar longitude; and Asteroid (3200) Phaethon, parent of the December Geminids at the Earth. In addition, several minor streams and a number of cometary asteroid orbits are found to approach the orbit of Venus sufficiently close to raise the possibility of some activity at that planet. Using an analytical approach described in Adolfsson et al. (Icarus 119 (1996) 144) we show that venusian meteors would be as bright or up to 2 magnitudes brighter than their Earth counterparts and reach maximum luminosity at an altitude range of 100-120, 20-30 km higher than at the Earth, in a predominantly clear region of the atmosphere. We discuss the feasibility of observing venusian showers based on current capabilities and conclude that a downward-looking Venus-orbiting meteor detector would be more suitable for these purposes than Earth-based monitoring. The former would detect a shower of an equivalent Zenithal Hourly Rate of at least several tens of meteors.     

Double station and spectroscopic observations of the Quadrantid meteor shower and the implications for its parent body

Object 2003 EH₁ was recently identified as the parent body of the Quadrantid meteor shower. The origin of this body is still uncertain. We use data on 51 Quadrantid meteors obtained from double-station video observations as an insight on the parent body properties. A data analysis shows that the Quadrantids are similar to other meteor showers of cometary origin in some aspects, but in others to Geminid meteors. Quadrantid meteoroids have partially lost volatile component, but are not depleted to the same extent as Geminid meteoroids. In consideration of the orbital history of 2003 EH₁, these results lead us to the conclusion that the parent body is a dormant comet.     

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.     

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.     

On activity periods of the April Lyrids

The activity of the Lyrid meteor shower is analyzed by visual observations in the interval 1900–2007. Processing of observations over a long time interval confirmed the presence of two periods of activity of the shower, of 12 and 60 years. These periods almost coincide with the period and five times Jupiter’s orbital period, i.e., 11.8 and 59.3 years, respectively, suggesting the possible influence of Jupiter on the shower structure. High activity of the shower is observed when the epoch of observations and the commensurate moment coincide with the orbital period of Jupiter and can be registered in the next 1–2 years. The increased activity of Lyrid by visual observations suggests that ZHR exceeds 30 meteors per hour. The modeling of activity profiles of showers for different minimum masses of meteoroids has shown that there is a correlation between the longitude of the node from the orbit with the mass of particles.     

CAMS: Cameras for Allsky Meteor Surveillance to establish minor meteor showers

First results are presented from a newly developed meteoroid orbit survey, called CAMS – Cameras for Allsky Meteor Surveillance, which combines meteor detection algorithms for low-light video observations with traditional video surveillance tools. Sixty video cameras at three stations monitor the sky above 31° elevation. Goal of CAMS is to verify meteor showers in search of their parent comets among newly discovered near-Earth objects.This paper outlines the concept of operations, the hardware, and software methods used during operation and in the data reduction pipeline, and accompanies the data release of the first batch of meteoroid orbits. During the month of November 2010, 2169 precisely reduced meteoroid trajectories from 17 nights have an error in the apparent radiant of the trajectory <2° and error in speed <10%. Median values of the error are 0.31° and 0.53 km/s, respectively, sufficient to resolve the intrinsic dispersion of annual meteor showers and resolve minor showers from the sporadic background. The limiting visual magnitude of the cameras is +5.4, recording meteors of +4 magnitude and brighter, bright enough to stand out from the mostly fainter sporadic meteors detected as under dense radar echoes.CAMS readily detected all established showers (6) active during the clear nights in November. Of the showers that needed confirmation, we confirm the theta Aurigids (THA, IAU#390), the chi Taurids (CTA, IAU#388), and the omicron Eridanids (OER, IAU#338). We conclude that the iota November Aurigids (IAR, IAU#248) are in fact the combined activity of the theta Aurigids and chi Taurids, and this shower should be dismissed from the list. Finally, there is also a clustering consistent with the zeta Cancrids (ZCN, IAU#243), but we cannot exclude that this is lower perihelion dust belonging to the Orionid shower.Data are submitted to the IAU Meteor Data Center on a semi-regular basis, and can be accessed also at http://cams.seti.org.     

Benefits of an impact mission to 3200 Phaethon: nature of the extinct comet and artificial meteor shower

The asteroid 3200 Phaethon is suggested as a candidate for direct impact research. The object is considered to be an extinct comet and the parent of the Geminid meteor shower. One could say that this provides a possible argument for a space mission. Based on such a mission, this paper proposes to investigate the nature of the extinct comet and the additional interesting possibility of artificially generated meteor showers.
Dust trail theory can calculate the distribution of a bundle of trails and be used to show in which years artificial meteors would be expected. Results indicate that meteor showers will be seen on Earth about 200 yr after the event, on 2022 April 12.     

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.     

Physical Characteristics of Kazan Minor Showers as Determined by Correlations with the Arecibo UHF Radar

In the northern hemisphere, the month of February is characterized by a lack of major meteor shower activity yet a number of weak minor showers are present as seen by the Kazan radar. Using the Feller transformation to obtain the distribution of true meteor velocities from the distribution of radial velocities enables the angle of incidence to be obtained for the single beam AO (Arecibo Observatory) data. Thus the loci of AO radiants become beam-centered circles on the sky and one can, with simple search routines, find where these circles intersect on radiants determined by other means. Including geocentric velocity as an additional search criterion, we have examined a set of February radiants obtained at Kazan for coincidence in position and velocity. Although some may be chance associations, only those events with probabilities of association > 0.5 have been kept. Roughly 90 of the Kazan showers have been verified in this way with mass, radius and density histograms derived from the AO results. By comparing these histograms with those of the “background” in which the minor showers are found, a qualitative scale of dynamical minor shower age can be formulated. Most of the showers are found outside the usual “apex” sporadic source areas where it is easiest to detect discrete showers with less confusion from the background.     

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.     

Meteor Outburst Profiles and Cometary Ejection Models

The spatial structure of meteor streams, and the activity profiles of their corresponding meteor showers, depend firstly on the distribution of meteoroid orbits soon after ejection from the parent comet nucleus, and secondly on the subsequent dynamical evolution. The latter increases in importance as more time elapses. For younger structures within streams, notably the dust trails that cause sharp meteor outbursts, it is the cometary ejection model (meteoroid production rate as a function of time through the several months of the comet’s perihelion return, and velocity distribution of the meteoroids released) that primarily determines the shape and width of the trail structure. This paper describes how a trail cross section can be calculated once an ejection model has been assumed. Such calculations, if made for a range of ejection model parameters and compared with observed parameters of storms and outbursts, can be used to constrain quantitatively the process of meteoroid ejection from the nucleus, including the mass distribution of ejected meteoroids.     

First definitive observations of meteor shower particles using a high-power large-aperture radar

We present the first clear observations of meteor shower activity from meteor-head echoes detected by a high-power large-aperture radar (HPLAR). Such observations have been performed at the Jicamarca VHF radar using its interferometric capabilities allowing the discrimination of meteor shower echoes from the much more frequent sporadic meteors. Until now, HPLARs were unable to distinguish meteor shower from the much more common sporadic meteor ones. In this work we have been able to detect and characterize the η-Aquariids (ETA) as well as the Perseids (PER) showers. The shower activity is more conspicuous for the ETA than for the PER shower due to the more favorable geometry. Namely, PER meteors come from low elevation angles, experiencing more filtering due to the combined Earth-atmosphere-radar instrument. In both cases, there is an excellent agreement between the measured mean velocity of the shower echoes and their expected velocity, within a fraction of 1 km s⁻¹. Besides the good agreement with expected visual results, HPLARs observe meteors with a variety of particles sizes and masses, not observed by any other technique. Taking into account the different viewing volumes, compare to optical observations Jicamarca observes more than 1000 times more ETA meteors. Our results indicate that Jicamarca and other HPLARs are able to detect the echoes from meteor showers, but without interferometric capabilities such populations are difficult to identify just from their velocity distributions, particularly if their velocity distributions are expected to be similar to the more dominant distributions of sporadic meteors.     

Predictions for the Aurigid Outburst of 2007 September 1

The September 2007 encounter of Earth with the 1-revolution dust trail of comet C/1911 N1 (Kiess) is the most highly anticipated dust trail crossing of a known long period comet in the next 50 years. The encounter was modeled to predict the expected peak time, duration, and peak rate of the resulting outburst of Aurigid shower meteors. The Aurigids will radiate with a speed of 67 km/s from a radiant at R.A. = 92°, Decl. = +39° (J2000) in the constellation Auriga. The expected peak time is 11:36 ± 20 min UT, 2007 September 1, and the shower is expected to peak at Zenith Hourly Rate = 200/h during a 10-min interval, being above half this value during 25 min. The meteor outburst will be visible by the naked eye from locations in Mexico, the Western provinces of Canada, and the Western United States, including Hawaii and Alaska. A concerted observing campaign is being organized. Added in proof: first impression of the shower. Prepared as a contribution to the conference proceedings of “Meteoroids 2007”, to be published in the journal “Earth, Moon, and Planets”.     

Infrasonic Observations of Meteoroids: Preliminary Results from a Coordinated Optical-radar-infrasound Observing Campaign

Recent observations using the newly installed Elginfield infrasound array in coordination with the Southern Ontario all-sky meteor camera network and Canadian Meteor Orbit Radar (CMOR) has shown that the number of meteors producing infrasound at the Earth’s surface is more frequent than previously thought. These data show the flux of meteoroids capable of producing infrasound at the ground is at least 1/month and is limited to meteors with peak visual brightness above −2. Comparisons to current meteor infrasound theory show excellent agreement with amplitude and period predictions for weakly non-linear shock waves using a realistic vertically inhomogeneous atmosphere. Similar predictions show isothermal assumptions underestimate the amplitude by orders of magnitude.     

Meteor44 Video Meteor Photometry

Meteor44 is a software system developed at MSFC for the calibration and analysis of video meteor data. The photometric range of the (8 bit) video data is extended from a visual magnitude range of from 8 to 3 to from 8 to −8 for both meteors and stellar images using saturation compensation. Camera and lens specific saturation compensation coefficients are derived from artificial variable star laboratory measurements. Saturation compensation significantly increases the number of meteors with measured intensity and improves the estimation of meteoroid mass distribution. Astrometry is automated to determine each image's plate coefficient using appropriate star catalogs. The images are simultaneously intensity calibrated from the contained stars to determine the photon sensitivity and the saturation level referenced above the atmosphere. The camera's spectral response is used to compensate for stellar color index and typical meteor spectra in order to report meteor light curves in traditional visual magnitude units. Recent efforts include improved camera calibration procedures and long focal length "streak" meteor photometry. Meteor44 has been used to analyze data from the 2001, 2002 and 2003 MSFC Leonid observational campaigns as well as several lesser showers.     

Activities of Parent Comets and Related Meteor Showers

The activity of a meteor shower is thought to be proportional to the activities through time of the parent comet. Recent applications of the dust trail theory provide us not only with a new method to forecast the occurrences and intensities of shower activities, but it is also offers a new approach to explore the history of past activities of the parent comet by retro-tracking its associated meteor showers. We introduce the result of an effort for relating meteor shower activities to the parent comet activities for which we chose the October Draconids and comet 21P/Giacobini-Zinner in this paper.     

Television meteor radiant mapping

We have carried out double-station TV meteor observations between 1990 and 1994. The orbits of 326 meteors have been determined from doubly observed meteors, and radiant distributions are studied. The mean magnitude of the observed meteors was as faint as +4.7, since I.I. (Image Intensifier) and Video cameras were used. Radiants were widely distributed over the celestial sphere. The velocity distribution showed some similarity with the distribution predicted by the theoretical radiant distribution from comets rather than that from asteroids. In all 13 showers including both major and minor meteor showers were detected from radiant distributions of the observed meteors; from the orbital elements and meteor velocities as well as from the radiant directions.