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Elsevier, Icarus, (253), p. 25-30, 2015

DOI: 10.1016/j.icarus.2015.02.021

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Observations of the new Camelopardalids meteor shower using a 38.9MHz radar at Mohe, China

Journal article published in 2015 by J. P. Younger, I. M. Reid ORCID, G. Li, B. Ning, L. Hu
This paper is available in a repository.
This paper is available in a repository.

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Data provided by SHERPA/RoMEO

Abstract

The Camelopardalids meteor shower was predicted to occur for the first time on 24 May 2014, based on optical observations of the comet 209P/LINEAR. Using a 38.9 MHz meteor radar located at Mohe, China, we were able to detect approximately 590 shower meteors originating from an average pre-infall radiant of R.A. = 129.1° ± 9.8°, declination = 79.4° ± 1.6° (J2000) with a geocentric velocity of 16.0 ± 1.6 km s−1. Measurements of the shower duration, direction, velocity, and individual meteor detection heights facilitated a detailed analysis of the parent debris stream. Orbital parameters were calculated including a semi-major axis of 2.86 AU, eccentricity of 0.659, and inclination of 21.1°. Combining orbital parameters with the shower activity duration FWHM of 5.09 h, it was found that the stream has a FWHM of at least 211,000 km at 1 AU, as measured perpendicular to the direction of orbital motion. A comparison of shower meteor detection heights and diffusion coefficient estimates with the sporadic background is consistent the prediction of Ye and Wiegert (Ye, Q., Wiegert, P. [2014]. Mon. Not. R. Astron. Soc. 437, 3283–3287) that Camelopardalid meteoroids are biased towards larger sizes or that Cameloppardalid meteoroids are less fragile than sporadic background meteoroids.