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Re: (meteorobs) Leonids to be discussed on NPRs Science Friday



In a message dated 11/15/2002 10:13:17 PM Eastern Standard Time, cp@linuxtech.com writes:


When you started
mentioning names I thought I would hear Donald Yeomans name, but perhaps I
was just being biased since my father worked with him years ago at JPL.
You mentioned three names and said they had done significant work on the
plotting and computer modeling of the various dust clouds.  What are the
names of the astronomers again?

       Donald Yeomans wrote what many considered to be the definitive paper on the Leonids back in 1981 in the journal Icarus.  He wrote a follow-up in 1997 just before the recovery of Comet 55P/Tempel-Tuttle.  Unfortunately, the method that Yeomans (and others) employed to anticipate a meteor storm was solely based on the position of the parent comet's orbit relative to the Earth, as well as the actual position of the comet itself.  This "analog" method (for lack of a better term) only worked some of the time; at other times anticipated meteor storms never materialized.

       In the past several years, many forecasters have gone from analog-type predictions to actually plotting the positions of dust trails out in space left behind by 55P on previous visits.  The three whom I mentioned on the NPR show were Rob McNaught of Australia, David Asher of Ireland and Esko Lyytinen in Finland.  There are others who have made valuable contributions in meteor predictions, but unfortunately I couldn't mention everyone because of the time constraints.

-- joe rao