The Challenge of Identifying Interstellar Meteors and Members of Minor Meteor Showers
Astronomical Institute of the Slovak Academy of Sciences
First floor meeting room – Office building
Astrophysics Observatory of Turin
LIVE STREAMING
Abstract
My talk will focus on the influence of observational and measurement errors of meteors on the resulting orbits of meteoroids. I will demonstrate that even small errors can easily cause an orbit’s hyperbolicity and that distinguishing between a long-period orbit and a hyperbolic orbit needs a resolution higher than 1 km/s in speed and 1 deg in radiant coordinates.
This causes difficulties with the search for a meteoroid‘s origin in or beyond the solar system, i.e. identifying interstellar meteors and members of minor meteor showers.
Thus, measurement errors can create an artificial population of interstellar meteors or non-existing minor meteor showers.