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When Might 2P/Encke Have Produced Meteor Storms?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 February 2018

D.I. Steel  and
D.J. Asher
D.I. Steel
Affiliation:
The University of Adelaide, Adelaide, SA 5005, Australia
D.J. Asher
Affiliation:
National Astronomical Observatory, Mitaka, Tokyo 181, Japan

Abstract

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2P/Encke is the only Earth-crossing short-period comet to have a meteoroid/dust trail identified in the data collected by IRAS Such trails have been suggested by Kresák to be the cause of meteor storms, these occurring when the comet/trail node is near 1 AU and the Earth happens to pass through the trail. Here we present the results of integrations of variational orbits of 2P/Encke (the differences in the assumed initial semi-major axes representing the order of changes that could occur due to non-gravitational effects) from which we derive indications of when this comet may have produced meteor storms in the past. Pairs of sets of storms are expected about 300 yr apart, but the effects of chaotic dynamical evolution (and our ignorance of 2P/Encke's non-gravitational forces for any but the last two centuries) mean that we cannot define the epochs in which these may have occurred to better than 200 BC to AD 500 for the last pair, and 3600 to 1800 BC for the previous pair. Looking forwards in time, no meteor storm due to 2P/Encke will occur for at least 600 yr.

Type
III. Meteoroid Streams
Information
International Astronomical Union Colloquium , Volume 150: Physics, Chemistry and Dynamics of Interplanetary Dust , 1996 , pp. 125 - 128
Copyright
Copyright © Astronomical Society of the Pacific 1996

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