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(meteorobs) Leonid MAC: December 08, 2003 [QUA Parent Comet Identified!]



[Forwarded without explicit permission of the author. -L Gramer]


LEONID MULTI-INSTRUMENT AIRCRAFT CAMPAIGN 

Status of project as of December 08, 2003
=========================================

1. QUADRANTID PARENT COMET IDENTIFIED

IAU Circular No. 8252 (December 08) announced the discovery
of the Quadrantid parent comet. I suspected it to be still
present among the Quadrantid meteoroid stream after precise
orbit measurements by my collaborators of the Dutch Meteor
Society in 1995 showed that the stream was very young,
about 500 years old. Back on March 6, the Lowell Observatory 
Near-Earth Object Survey first spotted this asteroid and the 
orbit was refined significantly by other observers in the next 
48 days. Now, in searching the asteroid orbit database, I found 
the orbit of minor planet 2003 EH1 to be very close to that expected 
for the Quadrantid parent. The identification of a dust trail in
the orbit of 2003 EH1 (the Quadrantids) identifies this object 
as a (now likely extinct) comet nucleus that appears to be the 
remnant of a larger object that broke up about 500 years ago.

A paper (submitted to Astron. J.) about this has been posted at:
http://aio.arc.nasadot gov/~leonid/EH1.pdf

2. LEONIDS 2003 SPOILED BY CLOUDS

The 2003 Leonid campaign was a low-key effort, despite expectations
of elevated rates, including two encounters with identified
dust trails. Unfortunately, clouds hampered observations at most
observing sites, including our key sites in Alaska (Peter Jenniskens
and Hans Nielsen) and Virginia (Peter Gural and George Varros). 
Fortunately, observations from the broader Filament component (not the
dust trails) were possible from California (Mike Koop and
David Holman) and in the night before from Virginia, providing 
multi-station video orbits of the Filament meteoroids. Moreover,
a new instrument for rapidly pointing at meteors was tested at the
Poker Flats facility of the Geophysical Institute of the University
of Alaska (host Hans Nielsen) by Jenniskens and Gural and found
to perform as expected. The instrument, using software developed by
Peter Gural, increased the field of view of Nielsen's high frame-rate
imager by a factor of about 40, resulting in 12 detections in two
off-peak nights, as opposed to 60 detections in the 2002 Leonid storm
campaign. The instrument was developed with support of NASA's Astro-
biology Instrument and Development (ASTID) program.

3. AGU METEORS MEETING

The Fall AGU meeting features both a morning and afternoon session
on meteor research, as well as a poster session. The meeting is
organized by Diego Janches and Jonathan Friedman of NAIC/Arecibo
Observatory. The meteor session will be on Thursday Dec 11.

4. CALL FOR PAPERS COSPAR
 
The next COSPAR meeting will be held in Paris, July 18 - 25 2004 
(http://www.copernicus.org/COSPAR/COSPAR.html).
At this meeting will be a special session devoted to meteor 
spectroscopy and related studies of cometary dust. Early birds
may be able to benefit from travel grants. COSPAR just announced
that the website is up.  


- Peter Jenniskens


..........................................................................
 
 Peter Jenniskens       
             
   The SETI Institute                    e-mail:
   pjenniskens@mail.arc.nasadot gov
   2035 Landings Drive                      tel: (650) 966-8117 or
   604-3086
   Mountain View, CA 94043                  fax: (650) 961-9705
 
   http://leonid.arc.nasadot gov
   http://aio.arc.nasadot gov/~leonid/

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