Minor Planet 2008 Ed69 and the Kappa Cygnid Meteor Shower

Abstract

Until recently, the kappa Cygnids (IAU#12) were considered an old shower, because the meteors were significantly dispersed in node, radiant, and speed, despite being 28-38• inclined. In 1993, an outburst of kappa Cygnids was observed, which implied that this meteoroid stream was relatively young, instead. At least some dust was still concentrated in dust trailets. Until now, no active comet parent body was known, however, and the wide 22• dispersion of nodes was difficult to explain. This work reports that a minor planet has been discovered that has the right orbital dynamics to account for the kappa Cygnids. Minor planet 2008 ED69 is intrinsically bright, with H = 16.7 ± 0.3, and moves in a highly inclined orbit (i = 36.3• ). With one node near Jupiter's orbit, the perihelion distance, longitude of perihelion, and node quickly change over time, but in a manner that keeps dust concentrated for a long period of time. The stream is more massive than the remaining body, and a form of fragmentation is implicated. A break-up, leaving a stream of meteoroids and at least the one remaining fragment 2008 ED69, can account for the observed dispersion of the kappa Cygnids in Earth's orbit, if the formation epoch is about 2-3 nutation cycles ago, dating to around 4000-1600 BC. Most of that debris now passes close to the orbit of Venus, making the kappa Cygnids a significant shower on Venus.

Meteoroid stream of 12P/Pons-Brooks, Decemberκ-Draconids, and Northern June Aquilids

“…It is beyond the scope of this paper to give a complete review of all relevant studies. We could describe here those by Wu & Williams (1992, 1993, Williams et al (2004b,a), Jones et al (2006), Porubčan et al (2006), Babadzhanov et al (2008), Jenniskens & Vaubaillon (2008), Wiegert et al (2009), Christou & Vaubaillon (2010), Williams & Ryabova (2011), Babadzhanov et al (2013), and other authors. A review of the techniques used for the modeling of meteoroid streams in the solar system was recently given by Vaubaillon et al (2015).…”

“…Of the works mentioned in Sect. 1, the P-R effect was taken into account only by McIntosh & Jones (1988) and in the works coauthored by Vaubaillon (Jenniskens & Vaubaillon 2008;Wiegert et al 2009;Christou & Vaubaillon 2010), in which the method of sofisticated stream modeling (Vaubaillon 2004;Vaubaillon et al 2005) was used. Recently, the P-R drag was considered by Jakubík & Neslušan (2015) in their study of the Phaethon's meteoroid stream.…”

Near-Earth asteroids among the Scorpiids meteoroid complex

“…The χ-Orionids are associated with asteroid 2008XM1 (Madiedo et al 2013). Other associations have been discussed by Jenniskens & Vaubaillon (2008) and Trigo-Rodriguez et al (2007.…”

Near-Earth asteroids among the Iota Aquariids meteoroid stream

“…Since the review of Porubcan et al (2004), there have been a number of advances, the most notable perhaps being NEO 2003EH1 and its association Article published by EDP Sciences with the Quadrantid shower (Jenniskens 2004;Williams et al 2004), while Babadzhanov & Williams (2007) found meteor showers associated with 2000PG3 andBabadzhanov et al (2008b) found that 4 NEOs were related to the Piscids meteoroid stream. Jenniskens & Vaubaillon (2008) showed that the Kappa Cygnids had a similar origin. An overview of the topic is given in Jenniskens (2008).…”

“…The problem of distinguishing between a dormant comet and an asteroid is not confined to the NEO population, as discussed for example in the outer asteroid belt by Fitzsimmons et al (1994), Williams (1997). Near the end of their lives, a comet nucleus may also fragment, leaving several small objects on very similar orbits to each other (Jenniskens & Vaubaillon 2008), none showing any signs of cometary activity and all classed as asteroids.…”