[meteorite-list] re: Bootids (Quadrantids) meteor shower and 2003 EH1

From: Marco Langbroek <marco.langbroek_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Thu Apr 22 10:18:03 2004
Message-ID: <008e01c3c87e$6ad5d920$d1c6ea3e_at_HAL>

Hello Doug and others,

> 1. I can't resist asking if anyone can correlate any Jan 3 or (Jan 4?)
falls,
> or there about. This should be a fresh research question.

I don't think it is likely that the Quadrantids produce meteorites. The
dynamic behaviour of these meteors points out that they consist of very
fragile material that destroys completely in the upper atmosphere.
Quadrantids do not penetrate deep into the atmosphere, their average
end-height is for example higher up than for Geminids.

The early part of the story of the identification of 2003 EH1 as the
possible parent of the Quadrantids (and as a dormant comet) is one of a
definite succes of amateur meteor observers, and I am happy to have played a
(minor) part in that. It used to be thought that the Quadrantids were a very
old stream, derived many thousands of years ago from comet Machholz therough
a series of orbital evolution events. It were detailed Quadrantid meteor
orbits obtained by our Dutch Meteor Society in 1995 (by means of
triangulation of photograpic and video records) which showed that this could
not be: the scatter in the orbits was much too small for that. The scatter
in fact suggested that the stream was not much older than 500 years or so.
So the link with Machholz was rejected and it was proposed that the real
parent was a still undiscovered dormant comet, hiding as a yet undiscovered
asteroid in an orbit closely resembling that of the meteor stream. I was
co-author to that paper:

Jenniskens P., Betlem H., De Lignie M., Langbroek M. and Van Vliet M.:
Meteor stream activity V. The Quadrantids, a very young stream. Astronomy &
Astrophysics 327 (1997), 1242-1252.

With the discovery of 2003 EH1, it now seems we were right. :-)

For those interested in more details on the link between 2003 EH1 and the
Quadrantids: a pdf of a paper to appear in WGN (J. International Meteor
Organization) by Peter Jenniskens with more info can be get at:

http://aio.arc.nasa.gov/~leonid/EH1.pdf

To return to your question: don't look for meteorites connected to 2003 EH1.
This celestial body does not likely provide us with meteorites: but it's
debris generates a spectacular short peak of meteors each year on January
4th. This peak is very sharp and high activity (up to 150/hr) last very
short, a few hours only. The stream is one of the most narrow streams in
existence, and together with the Geminids the richest annual stream. It is a
difficult stream to observe due to its short peak (which has to coincide
with your local pre-dawn hours, as in the evening the radiant of the stream
is too low in the sky) and general bad northern hemisphere weather early
January. We captured the peak in full glory from the Netherlands in 1995,
and that was quite an event!

- Marco

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Marco Langbroek
Dutch Meteor Society (DMS)
Leiden, the Netherlands
52.15896 N, 4.48884 E (WGS 84)

meteorites_at_dmsweb.org
http://home.wanadoo.nl/marco.langbroek
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Received on Mon 22 Dec 2003 06:24:45 AM PST