In a message dated 10/25/1999 3:48:51 PM Eastern Daylight Time,
marcolan@stad.dsldot nl writes:
<< The topic of possible meteor activity from comet 1999J3 Linear already
has been discussed earlier. . . by Reinder Bouma
(comet observers will know him), who late July was one of the first to point
to a possible LOW LEVEL (!!!) activity on November 11. >>
In regard to this e-mail announcement by Marco Langbroek, I would just
like to note that my own comments concerning a possible LINEARID meteor
display were originally spurred on by an e-mail appearing on the meteorobs
list by Michal Haltuf on October 18 (Radio observation + Linearids). In his
notation concerning a possible LINEARID display, Mr. Haltuf commented that
the separation between the orbits of Earth and C/1999J3 was 0.003 a.u. with a
radiant near Beta UMi. Upon reading this, I became intrigued enough to check
this out for myself.
Interestingly, I went through practically the same procedure six days
earlier when Rob McNaught speculated on meteorobs on possible meteors coming
from his own newly discovered comet McNaught-Hartley, C/1999 T1 ("Does this
Shower Exist?).
When I came up with different values than what was noted by Mr. Haltuf, I
posted the first of my two detailed e-mails regarding possible meteor
activity from C/1999J3. I had no idea that Mr. Bouma was the first to point
the comet-meteor relationship out many moths ago (and frankly, I had
initially thought that Mr. Haltuf was the person who made the first
suggestion of this).
In any case, from Marco Lanbroek's forward, much of what Mr. Bouma
initially noted is indeed quite valid. As I mentioned earlier, a new meteor
shower associated with a long period object like C/1999J3 is quite
unprecedented. For the same reason that we would not have attributed any of
last year's Leonid fireballs to material that might have been shed from Comet
Tempel-Tuttle at its perihelion nine months earlier, so too we should not
hope to encounter freshly shed material from LINEAR'S recent September
perihelion.
We would have to hope for encountering residual material shed from its
previous apparitions. Unfortunately with a 60,000+ year period, there
doesn't seem to be much chance -- despite the favorable encounter geometry --
of seeing much activity.
Still . . . there still is always a chance of encountering some localized
concentration of material or, more likely, larger pieces that managed to
travel along with the main body of the comet for all of these centuries.
The overall distribution of such material near and along the comet path is,
of course, quite unknown, which is why I suggested a careful monitoring for
activity for up to a week before and after the time of Earth's passage
through the comet node.
In any case, I hope I didn't offend anybody on this list -- or Mr. Bouma
-- with my recent spate of comments concerning possible LINEARID activity.
-- joe rao
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