Meteor showers question

[chrisp9au (Chris)]

I'm all ready with the alarm set for 2am to go out and look for the Leonids in the morning, let's hope there are a few to see!

Question: (Not too dumb, I hope)

All the well known meteor showers, like the Leonids, relate to comets that passed by a fair while back.
What is the likelihood of there being a major new meteor shower relating to more recent comets, for example Comet McNaught from 2007?

I would imagine that with each new comet, somebody somewhere sits down and computes the odds of the earth passing through the comet's tail at some point in the future? And I guess it all depends on the composition of the comet itself?

Cheers
Chris

[Blue Skies (Jacquie)]

Meteor showers are related to more recent comets, rather than old ones. I once asked Rob McNaught why we dont get storm event predictions, like we are for the Leonids this year, for more showers and he said it was only the 'young' showers that put on shows like that. For example, showers like the eta Aquarids, which are from Halley, have been around for centuries and have evened out, so to speak, along the orbit. The Leonids are young and lumpy. The Geminids are another interesting case in that they are at their peak ZHR around now - they only appeared in the late 19th century and by the beginning of the 22nd they should be just about gone. The debris stream will have shifted away from us. The Leonid stream is shifting through space too - if you look at historical records they were first mentioned as beeing seen in October! And the 1799 Leonid storm event was seen on November 12th. So in the future we can expect to see them closer to the 18th than the 17th, as the stream continues to shift.

I think most comets don't come anywhere near us, so we never get showers from them, but it is possible that things could change in the future. Jupiter is good at perturbing orbits so there might be a surprise waiting for us but it just hasn't been found yet.

[chrisp9au (Chris)]

Thank you Jacquie, that explains a lot.

Maybe I should have been a bit more specific about "a while back".

You say that the Leonids are young, but you refer to sightings in the 18th century, which I would have said was a while back, in our terms. There have been quite a few major comets since then.

I guess I'm wondering what the likelihood is of meteor streams originating from comets like Ikeyi Seki, which first sparked my interests in astronomy back in 1965, or Comet West, Hyakutake, Hale-Bopp, or any of the more 'recent' comets?

Cheers
Chris

[Blue Skies (Jacquie)]

They are all comets that didn't or don't cross the earth's orbit, or even come close, so no showers come from them that we see. Not all comets that are seen will result in showers.

Actually, this reminds of a mention of meteor showers on Mars...hmm, no idea where I saw it though, sorry.

[chrisp9au (Chris)]

Thank you!

Chris

[fringe_dweller]

Originally Posted by chrisp9au

I guess I'm wondering what the likelihood is of meteor streams originating from comets like Ikeyi Seki, which first sparked my interests in astronomy back in 1965, or Comet West, Hyakutake, Hale-Bopp, or any of the more 'recent' comets?

Cheers
Chris

not much, the annual meteor showers tend to come from the trooper short period comets, like temple-tuttle (33 years) Halleys (75 or so years) ect, that go round and round and round the inner solar system, leaving behind a constant substantial trail of debris, whereas some of those you mentioned have huge orbital periods of 1000's of years, and even leave the solar system for a while, some never come back .. and the debri trail follows them out, as still going near same speed/direction as parent, altho perturbed by solar wind ect., they still follow roughly