Scientists track meteor shower to unusual comet seen every 4,000 years

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Meteor showers are the dazzling result of cometary debris building up along well-worn paths through the solar system, then burning up in Earth's atmosphere as our planet crosses that dust trail.

Scientists track meteor shower to unusual comet seen every 4,000 years : Read more

 

[rod]

The paper cited has these interesting points from the study. Meteor showers from known long-period comets, https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0019103521001500, 01-Sep-2021. "Highlights • The number of known meteor showers with long-period comet parent bodies has grown from 5 to 14. • Showers are detected only if the comet orbit has an orbital period less than 4000 years and passes to within about 0.01 AU from Earth's orbit. • Long-period comet meteor showers are significantly dispersed in solar longitude, radiant, and speed. • The change of longitude of perihelion with solar longitude is a strong function of inclination. • More dispersed (older) meteor showers show a steeper magnitude distrubution index."

My observation. The NASA ADS Abstract, Meteor showers from known long-period comets, https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2021Icar..36514469J/abstract, September 2021. Using Jean Meeus Astronomical Algorithms, a comet with mass ~ 6 x 10^15 g, a = 250 au, e = 0.995, aphelion ~ 499 au, perihelion ~ 1.25 au, P = 3953 years. In one billion years, this comet could complete ~ 253,000 revolutions around the Sun. The number of perihelion passages competed by these long period comets is unknown as well as how long the associated meteor showers on Earth have been occurring. Other studies indicate all comets in closed orbits around the Sun do not last many millions or billions of years. Clair Patterson age for the solar system using radiometric ages of meteorites is about 4.56 billion years old.

Here is another recent report and discussion on comets. https://forums.space.com/threads/me...d-our-solar-system-surprise-scientists.38925/