A 2022 τ-Herculid meteor cluster from an airborne experiment: automated detection, characterization, and consequences for meteoroids

¹ IMCCE, CNRS, Observatoire de Paris, PSL Université, Sorbonne Université, Université de Lille 1, UMR 8028 du CNRS, 77 av. Denfert-Rochereau 75014 Paris, France
e-mail: vaubaill@imcce.fr
² Sorbonne Université, CNRS, LIP6, 4 place Jussieu, 75005 Paris, France
e-mail: lionel.lacassagne@lip6.fr
³ University of Southern Queensland, West St, Toowoomba 4350, Australia
⁴ High Enthalpy Flow Diagnostics Group (HEFDiG), Institute of Space Systems, University of Stuttgart, Pfaffenwaldring 29, 70569 Stuttgart, Germany
⁵ Faculty of Mathematics, Physics and Informatics, Comenius University in Bratislava, Mlynská dolina, 842 48 Bratislava, Slovakia
⁶ Rocket Technologies International, Seventeen Mile Rd, Helidon 4344, Australia

Received: 16 September 2022
Accepted: 5 January 2023

Abstract

Context. The existence of meteor clusters has long since been a subject of speculation and so far only seven events have been reported, among which two involve less than five meteors, and three were seen during the Leonid storms.

Aims. The 1995 outburst of Comet 73P/Schwassmann-Wachmann was predicted to result in a meteor shower in May 2022. We detected the shower, proved this to be the result of this outburst, and detected another meteor cluster during the same observation mission.

Methods. The τ-Herculids meteor shower outburst on 31 May 2022 was continuously monitored for 4 h during an airborne campaign. The video data were analyzed using a recently developed computer-vision processing chain for meteor real-time detection.

Results. We report and characterize the detection of a meteor cluster involving 38 fragments, detected at 06:48 UT for a total duration of 11.3 s. The derived cumulative size frequency distribution index is relatively shallow: s = 3.1. Our open-source computer-vision processing chain (named FMDT) detects 100% of the meteors that a human eye is able to detect in the video. Classical automated motion detection assuming a static camera was not suitable for the stabilized camera setup because of residual motion.

Conclusions. From all reported meteor clusters, we crudely estimate their occurrence to be less than one per million observed meteors. Low heliocentric distance enhances the probability of such meteoroid self-disruption in the interplanetary space.