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RE: (meteorobs) MNRAS
> I hope that this gives some further clarification on this question.
Actually it destroyed the picture I had in my head of how the Leonids work, but that's good because the picture was wrong :)
> the trails tend to spread into a wider space region as the
> time from the comet location increases
I always imagined the particles were following each other through space, as where they inside a rollercoaster. I imagined a tube through which the particles were flowing. Now I see that the trails are moving more like a body, though the shape is changing because the particles have their own individual orbits. The particles are not following the leader, but this orbit. And now I can see why there can be different trails without the comet having to catch up with a previous trail!
> Further, if an encounter howewer
> were to happen, either the trail is quite old, or the original delta-a
> high, meaning less visible size meteors in an encounter.
Do you mean that for the trail to exist so far behind the comet a long time must have past since the ejection of the particles or the original dispersion was so high that the density of the trail is very low?
Daniel
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