Research Note

Association of individual meteors with their parent bodies

¹ Institut de Mécanique Céleste et de Calcul des Éphémérides – Observatoire de Paris, 77 avenue Denfert-Rochereau, 75014 Paris, France
e-mail: rudawska@imcce.fr
² Arecibo Observatory, HC03 Box 53995, Arecibo 00612, Puerto Rico, USA

Received: 30 December 2011
Accepted: 16 February 2012

Abstract

Context. The main problem in establishing a parent body for a meteoroid stream is the choice of a reliable meteoroid stream identification method. There are several identification methods based on three components: a dynamical similarity function, a threshold value, and meteoroid stream search algorithm.

Aims. The French Meteor Network, developed in the CABERNET project (PODET-MET), will soon provide a large amount of meteor observation data aiming to establish a parent body for each observed meteor. We therefore aim to obtain the value of the upper limit to the criteria that we can later use for data provided by the French Meteor Network.

Methods. We tested four D-criteria, using artificial data sets for which the parent body is known. We obtained threshold values and applied them to the Armagh Observatory meteor database. A detailed comparison is made between a similarity function based on the orbital elements and the function defined by quasi-invariants.

Results. We detected major meteoroid streams in the Armagh Observatory meteor database. A few meteors were also found to be associated with the asteroid 2005 UW6 – an asteroids not considered as a possible parent body for Taurid complex before. However, the problem of finding the appropriate threshold value that would work with all meteoroid streams is still open.