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Re: (meteorobs) Meteor paths & southern hemisphere.
On Fri, 29 Sep 2000, Stuart Saunders wrote:
> All meteors, unless sporadics, are part of one or other cometary dust
> trail. That dust trail must intersect the earths' orbit twice, both being
> ellipses, unless they 'tangent'.
Stuart,
Two ellipses, with the Sun at one focus may intersect at 0, 1 or 2 points.
A single point intersection is not only at a tangent. If you look at
the orbital elements, you are likely to get 2 intersections if the
perihelion distance (q) is inside the Earth's orbit and the inclination (i)
is close to zero. This means the orbital plane of the meteoroids is
in the same plane as the Earth' orbit. Alternatively, q is inside the
Earth's orbit and the argument of perihelion (w, that is small omega) is
close to 90 or 270 degrees. In that case, one intersection is north
of the ecliptic and the other south.
Cheers, Rob
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