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Astron. Astrophys. 351, 752-758 (1999)
2. Modelling of a theoretical stream
Meteoroid particles are most frequently released from the nucleus
of their parent body when closest to the Sun, i.e. at the perihelion
of the parent body. Taking this into account, we model a theoretical
meteoroid stream at the moment of perihelion passage of the parent
body considered.
The orbits of the particles are subsequently dispersed due to
non-zero ejection velocity and gravitational as well as
non-gravitational perturbances. The dispersion coming from the initial
orbital velocity difference and non-gravitational forces cannot move
the particles of an appropriate meteoroid stream associated with a
distant parent body (such as 14P/Wolf and D/1892 T1) close to the
Earth's orbit. Even if such particles cross the Earth's orbit, it is
not possible to distinguish them from the sporadic meteor background.
Therefore, stream particles can approach the orbit of our planet only
due to quasi-systematic gravitational perturbances, which deflect a
significant part of the stream from the original direction of its
motion to a quasi-uniform new direction. To map the action of the
gravitational perturbing forces, we study an evolution of a set of
theoretical particle orbits being very adjacent to the orbit of their
parent body, whereby we attempt to construct these orbits uniformly
around the parent body orbit.
If the disturbances are quasi-systematic, one expects that these
appear relatively soon after the release of the particles from the
parent body. Otherwise, the non-gravitational forces would chaotically
disperse the particle orbits and the disturbances could scarcely have
a systematic character. Consequently, the dispersion of the modelled
orbits has to be much smaller than the actual observed dispersion of
(long lasting) meteoroid streams. Thus, the modelled set of orbits
represents the most central part of the stream, not the entire
stream.
The non-gravitational forces are not considered in the
modelling.
To model the most central part of an investigated potential meteor
stream and to identify the theoretical particles with the actual
observed meteors in the catalogue, we execute the procedure consisting
of the following steps:
1. Integration of parent body
orbit backward up to its perihelion being most close to time
before the beginning of this
integration. The beginning is, practically, identical to the epoch
which orbital elements of the parent body in the Catalogue of Cometary
Orbits are referred to. is the
orbital period of the parent body at the beginning. We take into
account the perturbances from 8 planets (Mercury to Neptune). Their
initial radius and velocity vectors are taken from the Astronomical
Almanac (1983). The integration is done by using,,GAUSS-RADAU" (RA15)
integration method developed by Everhart (1985).
2. Proper modelling of the
theoretical stream. We consider a parent-body-centric coordinate
system with the plane identical to
the orbital plane of the parent body at the time of the end of the
integration executed in step 1 (the parent body is situated at its
perihelion). The axis of this
coordinate system is orientated by the heliocentric perihelion
velocity vector, , of the parent body.
Every modelled particle is assumed to have the magnitude of its
orbital velocity different to that of the parent body,
, about value
. We assume that
, where
is a constant factor. The spatial
grid of modelled particles is produced calculating the components of
the velocity vector in the parent-body-centric coordinate system.
These components represent the differences,
, ,
, between the components of
heliocentric velocity vectors of th
particle and the parent body. In a spherical coordinate system,
v, ,
, these differences can be given as
![[EQUATION]](img20.gif)
![[EQUATION]](img21.gif)
![[EQUATION]](img22.gif)
where , 1, 2,..., up to the
nearest integer of , and
,
,..., -1, 0, 1, 2,...,
, .
Assuming a uniform distribution, is
constant and . The uniformity of the
spatial grid further requires . If
( ),
then
( ). Finally,
.
In our particular case, we chose .
Consequently, we obtain a total number of 2578 particles. At the
moment of parent body perihelion passage, the heliocentric velocity
vector of th particle is
and its heliocentric radius vector
is identical to that of the parent body. Based on both the vectors,
the appropriate orbit can be determined.
The ejection velocity of particles from the cometary nucleus is a
free parameter in the above construction. Kresák &
Kresáková (1987) spoke about this parameter in term of
multiples ( in our paper) of the
orbital heliocentric velocity of the nucleus. For comet Halley, they
considered value corresponding to
m s-1. Utilizing the
observations of dust trails performed by the Infrared Astronomical
Satellite, Sykes et al. (1989) considered the values lower than 10
(Type I trails) and about
m s-1 (Type II
trails). The values 10 and
m s-1 correspond to
and
, respectively. In our particular
case, we consider 3 values of equal
to 0.0005, 0.001, and 0.002. These correspond to ejection velocities
from 14P/Wolf equal to 14.7, 29.4, and 58.8 m s-1, and
that from D/1892 T1 equal to 15.7, 31.4, and 62.8
m s-1, respectively.
We again note, only the most central strand of the stream is
modelled in this way. E.g. for comet 14P/Wolf, the dispersion of
orbits in this strand, characterized with the Southworth-Hawkins
(1963) discriminant, is 0.0016,
0.003, and 0.006 for , 0.001, and
0.002, respectively. The dispersion of orbits in an actual observed
stream is that of order of
(Neslusan et al. 1995). So, the
modelled orbits are actually much less dispersed than those of an
actual observed stream.
3. Forward integration of the
orbits of all modelled particles together with the orbit of the parent
body itself. An evolution of all the orbits is observed making the
output from the integration after elapsing every
for
, 1, 2, 3,...,10.
4. Identification of orbits of the
modelled particles with the orbits of actual meteors observed
photographically, which are contained in the catalogue of the IAU
Meteor Data Center in Lund (Lindblad 1987, 1991; Lindblad & Steel
1994). This identification is performed at each output.
We regard as similar orbits where the Southworth-Hawkins (1963)
discriminant is not higher than 0.24.
Investigating a mutual relationship among identified orbits of actual
observed meteors, we found that the limiting value
characterizing the dispersion of the
best orbits of Capricornids in the
catalogue is too strict for the similarity determination. This value
is in accord with the purpose of the method of selection of the
meteors from the database to select only such meteors, which can
definitely be assigned to the shower. The method of optimal separation
of meteors (Porubcan et al.
1995) could not unfortunately be applied and limiting value of
D obtained for Capricornids
because of their complicated structure. Since the limiting value of
the discriminant determined by the
second (optimal) method is about 2 times higher than that determined
by the first method for four studied major showers
(Porubcan et al. 1995) on
average, we decided to consider the value 0.12 twice as high in this
paper.
© European Southern Observatory (ESO) 1999
Online publication: November 3, 1999
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