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(meteorobs) 2003 Pi-Puppids


Hello you all,

A pi-puppids meteor "shower" will happend on April 23rd, 15:00 UT +- 1:00. But  particles
are expected to be very tiny. So the profile will probably be large: total duration of the
shower: 7 hours (that is why the uncertainty on the Max. time is so important)

So please, every visual, but especially radio meteor observers are asked to observe
carefully around this date.
The regions of the world concerned by this shower are located in south hemisphere.
But as the coordinates of the radiant are : alpha = 110°, delta = -45°, it is possible to
have echoes in North hemisphere too (south of Europe, India, Central America, USA, etc.).
Our results suggest that past Pi-Puppids meteor showers have often been missed due to poor
observing coverage. So I would like to draw your attention to the necessity of having (even
few) results (exactly as Esko Lyytinen and Peter Jenniskens' prediction last March).
In particular, though Australia and New Zealand are not the best situated regions, radio
observations are welcomed, as they can be done night and day. I also recall you that we
predict a long duration shower (compare to Leonids for example).

This result has already been submitted to A&A in last february, but we have still lots of
changes to add in the actual version of the article before it can be accepted.
Our work has been initialized by a first study made by Scott Messenger (M&PS, 37,
1491-1505, 2002). Messenger is a specialist of interplanetary dust, and has already
conducted some expedition to Antartica to collect some micrometeorites.
His study is simple, but the big advantage is that it is fast (keplerian orbits perturbed
by radiative forces). He has found 2 peaks on 23rd April 2003. He has simulated 600,000
particles in the size range [20-100 micron]. But he considered only the comet returns in
the 1967-1997 period, as initial condition for the ejection of the dust. His work has
encouraged us to look further, and was a very good first step towards accurate
forecastings.

We have done the same study as for leonids
(http://www.imcce.fr/s2p/leonides/predictions/Leonid_forecast.html).
The differences between our approach and Messenger's is that our model is far more complete
and takes into account gravitational perturbations induced by all planets, as well as
radiative forces.
We took 960,000 particles in the size range [50 micron - 1 mm], ejected from 1848 to 2002
(that makes 32 perihelion returns), and have associated the pi-puppids showers of 1972,
1977 and 1982 with streams of the 19th and 20th centuary. The coming shower is associated
with the1957 and 1961 streams, but we have found a SINGLE peak. This means that the 2
streams overlap.
We have also underlined how encounters with Jupiter have strong consequences on the
evolution of the streams.

Further explanations, as well as movies explaning the evolution of Pi-Puppids can be found
at:

www.imcce.fr/s2p/puppids/


As the article is stil now not finished, it can be interesting to add obsevration results.
Please, do not hesitate to braodcast this information and to contact us ;-)

Thanks a lot to any observer !!!

Best wishes.

Jeremie VAUBAILLON

--
************************************************************
* Jeremie VAUBAILLON
* Institut de Mecanique Celeste et de Calcul
* des Ephemerides (www.imcce.fr, ex bdl.fr)
* 77 Avenue Denfert Rochereau
* 75014 PARIS
* FRANCE
************************************************************
* tel : +33 (0)1 40 51 22 66
* fax : +33 (0)1 40 51 20 58
* URL : http://www.imcce.fr/Equipes/GAP/equipeGAP-jv-GB.html
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