Known asteroids parent bodies of meteor showers

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Meteor showers

Before talking about meteor showers we need to understand what is a meteoroid, a meteor and a meteorite and also the difference between meteor showers and mete-oroid streams.

Meteoroids

When an object revolves around the Sun (comet or asteroid), could leave fragments of mater behind it (see Fig. 1.3). The processes which generate these fragments are: ejection and disintegration at impacts, rotational instabilities, electrostatic repulsion, radiation pressure, dehydration stresses and thermal fracture, in addition to sublimation of ice (Jewitt et al. 2015). The fragments are called meteoroids, and are in the size range from 10 microns to 1 meters (Rubin & Grossman 2010). These meteoroids are gathered in confined tours, namely meteoroid stream and when the object that produces these meteoroids intersects Earth’s orbit (see Fig. 1.3), the fragments are collected by gravity.

Meteors

When the meteoroids enter in Earth’s atmosphere, they burn up and produce flashes of light that can be observed on the night sky. The flashes are called meteors. If a number of meteors appears on the same time of the year on the same place of the sky, then that phenomenon is called a meteor shower. The meteors from a meteor shower have the same velocity and parallel paths, but from the observer perspective from Earth the meteor shower appears to originate from a single point of the sky. This point is called radiant. This radiant receives the name of the constellation in which is located (e.g. Geminids shower has radiant in the Gemini constellation, the Leonids shower radiant is in the Leo constellation). If several meteor showers have the radiant in the same constellation then the current name gets a Greek letter as prefix (e.g. α-Draconid, Ω-Draconid, etc.) (see Fig. 1.4).
Taking into account that no instrument is needed to observe them, the meteor showers were observed by humans since millennia. However, even if this phenomenon can be seen with the naked eye, the first scientific study appeared only two centuries ago, when a great storm of Leonids shower was observed in November

Meteorites

The meteoroids which survive the atmosphere transitions and reach the ground, are called meteorites. These are of two types: the fall meteorites are that which are observed and recovered and the find meteorites are the others (they can not be associated with an observation).
The name of the meteorite is given after the closest human location where it was found (e.g. the Allende meteorite is a fall from Pueblito de Allende, Mexico). If the meteorite is found in the desert or uninhabited place, it will have been attributed a name and a number (e.g., Allan Hills (ALH) 84001 meteorite was found in Allan Hills mountain, in Antarctica).
The terms stony meteorites (rocky material), iron meteorites (metallic ma-terial) and stony-–iron meteorites (mixtures) are used from early 19th century but do not have much genetic significance today. Weisberg et al. (2006) created a new ap-proach for meteorites division: chondrites (undifferentiated meteorites) and achon-drites (differentiated meteorites) (see Fig. 1.5).
Chondrites are the meteorites with solar-like compositions (without the highly volatile elements) and are derived from asteroids or comets that did not experienced planetary differentiation. This group of meteorites is divided in classes and groups. The main classes of this group are:
1. Carbonaceous chondrites (with groups CI, CM, CO, CV, etc) that have in composition minerals such as olivine and serpentine (silicates, oxides and sul-fides). The finding rate of this type of asteroid is about 4.6% (Bischoff & Geiger 1995)
2. Ordinary chondrites (with groups H, L and LL) are stony chondritic meteorites composed of olivine, orthopyroxene and more or less oxidized nickel-iron (de-pends of the group) and represents about 87% of all found meteorites2 .
3. Estatite chondrites (with groups EH and EL) are a rare type of meteorites with high percentage of enstatite(M gSiO3 ) mineral that contain almost no iron oxide. This type represent about 2% of the fallen meteorites (Norton & Chitwood 2008)
Achondrites are igneous rock (melts, partial melts, melt residues) or brec-cias of igneous rock fragments from differentiated asteroids and planetary bodies (Mars, Moon) (Gnos et al. 2004; Treiman et al. 2000). It consists of terrestrial ma-terials such as basalts or plutonic rocks due to their melting and recrystallization on or within meteorite parent body (Gupta & Sahijpal 2010). The same meteorites can have achondritic textures (igneous or recrystallized) and a primitive chemical affinity to their chondritic precursors. This class is called primitive achondrites and contains nonchondritic meteorites, but are closer to their primitive chondritic parent than other achondrites (Weisberg et al. 2006).
As it was mentioned there are two groups of this meteorites:
1. Achondrites meteorites are stony meteorites that do not contain chondrules. In this group, one can find meteorites which came from asteroids (such as EUC, HED, HOW, etc), Moon and Mars (such as SHE, NAK, etc.). The asteroidal achondrites or evolved achondrites are the meteorites with mineralogical and chemical composition changed from the original parent body by melting and crystallization processes.
2. Primitive achondrites, also called PAC group, contain meteorites with primi-tive chemical affinity to their chondritic precursors, but with igneous texture (indicative of melting processes)
There is also a similarity between asteroids and meteorite spectra. Those associations are between: Ch, Cgh types asteroids with CM meteorites, K types asteroids with CV, CO, CR, CK meteorites, X types asteroids with iron meteorites, V types asteroids with HED meteorites, Xc types asteroids with ECs and aubrites meteorites, T types asteroids with Tagish Lake meteorite, K types asteroids with mesosiderites, A types asteroids with pallasites and brachinites, S types asteroids with ordinary chondrites (Vernazza et al. 2016).
In December 2017 the Meteoritical Bulletin Database3 had approximately 57200 meteorites.

Asteroids and Comets

Asteroids

Asteroids or minor planets are fragments of matter which have remained since the early formation of our Solar System about 4.6 billion years ago (Tsirvoulis & Michel 2016).
They are objects with irregular shape, without atmosphere, often pitted or cratered and can have variable sizes between from hundreds of kilometers to only a few tens of meters in diameter. Also, they revolve around the Sun on elliptical orbits and rotate around its own axis, sometimes quite erratically, tumbling as they go.
The term asteroid appear after the discovery of the planet Uranus by Sir William Herschel in 1781, who used the Titius–Bode law. The law says that at the distance 2.8 a.u. there must be a planet (Graner & Dubrulle 1994).
The first object of its kind was discovered on 01 January 1801 by the as-tronomer Giuseppe Piazzi, namely Ceres4 , and was considered a new planet (Ureche 1982). After Ceres discovery, other objects were found, (2) Pallas, (3) Juno, and
(4) Vesta, over the next few years, and a new category appeared namely aster-oids. The term asteroid was proposed by Sir William Herschel, meaning star-like (Cunningham & Hughes 1988). Today we know approximate by 750 000 asteroids in IAU Minor Plane Center5 database and every month over 4 000 new asteroids are discovered.
In order to highlight the discovered asteroids, rules of nomenclature were imposed and accepted by astronomical community worldwide. Thus, each well known asteroid has a serial number and a proper name (1 Ceres, 2 Pallas, 3 Juno, etc.). The new findings are reported to the Minor Planet Center, were are assigned provisional indicative until their confirmation. The indicative consists of two parts: the year of discovery and a group of two letters (the first letter indicates the time of year expressed in half of the calendar month in which they made the discovery, and the second designates the number of discovery from the time interval deliberate of the first letter). For example, the asteroid 1979 DA was discovered in 1979 in the second half of February (D indicate the 4th interval of 15 days of the year) and is the first discovery in the mentioned interval (A). The final name of the asteroid is given in the board of IAU nomenclature and the name is chosen from proposals made previously by researchers in the field, after its orbit is very well known.
There are two criteria for classifying asteroids: by their orbits and by their physical parameters.

Dynamical classification

The asteroids classification after there dynamical elements is presented below (Fig. 1.7):
1. Main belt asteroids: asteroids located between Mars and Jupiter (at 2–4 a.u. from Sun, see Fig. 1.7b). Here are the most of the asteroids. Their existence today is due to the birth of Jupiter, which prevented the formation of another planetary bodies between Mars and Jupiter. Also, they are divided in sub-groups, namely families: Hungarias, Floras, Phocaea, Koronis, Eos, Themis, Cybeles and Hildas. The family name is given after the main asteroid in the group.
2. Trojan asteroids: asteroids that have identical orbit with those of planets. These asteroids are located in L4 and L5 of the Lagrangian points of the planets. Today we know six planets that have Trojans asteroids:
(a) Venus has four Trojan asteroids: 2001CK32, 2002VE68, 2012XE133 and 2013ND15 (de la Fuente Marcos & de la Fuente Marcos 2014).
(b) Earth has just one confirmed Trojan asteroids, namely 2010TK7 (Connors et al. 2011).
(c) Mars has seven Trojan asteroids: (5261)Eureka, (101429)1998VF31, (211514)1999UJ7, (311999)2007NS2, 2001DH47, 2011SC191 and 2011UN63. Also another candidate for this category is 2011SL25 (de la Fuente Marcos & de la Fuente Marcos 2013).
(d) Jupiter has over 6 500 of Trojan asteroids. The entire list can be found on Minor Planet Center website6 .
(e) Uranus has two Trojan asteroids: 2011QF99 and 2014YX49 (de la Fuente Marcos & de la Fuente Marcos 2017).
(f) And finally, Neptune has 17 Trojan asteroids. The entire list can be found on Minor Planet Center website7 .
3. Near Earth Asteroids (NEA’s). Are the objects in Earth’s proximity. There are known over 17 500 such objects. These objects are classified after their orbital elements in five categories (see Fig. 1.7a):
– Atiras or Apohele asteroids are the objects that have orbits inside Earth orbit. These objects have the aphelion distance smaller then the perihelion distance of Earth. That means that semi-major axis is also smaller than Earth’s semi-major axis.
– Atens asteroids are objects that have semi-major axis smaller then 1 a.u., but intersect the Earth’s orbit. Also these objects have the aphelion distance bigger than 0.983 a.u.
– Appolo asteroids are the objects that intersect the Earth’s orbit. These objects are between semi-major axis bigger than 1 a.u. and perihelion distance smaller than 1.017 a.u., were the value of 1.017 is the Earth’s aphelion distance.
– Amor asteroids are objects that orbits outside the Earth’s orbit. These objects have perihelion distance greater than Earth’s aphelion distance.
– Potentially Hazardous Asteroids (PHA) are the asteroids that have Minimum Orbit Intersection Distance (MOID) with Earth smaller than 0.05 a.u.
4. Centaurus asteroids: are the asteroids that orbit between Jupiter and Neptune. These are very interesting objects due to their asteroidal and commentary features. Also have unstable orbits due to their orbital cross of gas giants and unexpected surface color variations.
5. Kuiper belt (KBOs) and trans–Neptunian objects (TNOs): The KBOs are objects composed mainly of frozen water, methane and ammonia, and orbit between Neptune and up to 50 a.u. from the Sun. Also these objects belong to a family namely trans-Neptunian Objects (TNOs) (see Lee et al. 2007, and all ref.). This family contains all objects that orbit between Neptune and Oort Cloud (objects from Oort Cloud are also included). The name Kuiper belt, was given in honor of the astronomer Gerard Peter Kuiper, who predicted and demonstrated the existence of this disk of matter. Also, the Oort Cloud was named after astronomer Jan Oort, who concluded that at the commentary origin lies a vast cloud of matter, at approximate one light year from the Sun (at the gravitational boundary of the Solar System, see Fig. 1.7c). & Binzel 2002a; Lazzaro et al. 2004, etc.). The last and most used taxonomic class was published in 2009 and contains 24 asteroids classes divided in three groups: C objects associated with carbon-rich material, S objects rich in compounds of silicon and X for metallic objects (DeMeo et al. 2009a) (see Fig. 1.8).
With the help of the albedo one can determinate the surface composition. An albedo smaller than 0.15 (excluding the metallic ones) is akin to primitive objects belonging to taxonomic class such as C, D, B or G (Fulchignoni et al. 2000) while an albedo larger than 0.15 could be associated to objects closer to ordinary chondrites (S–complex), or to objects which experienced partial or total melting (V, O, A, or X taxonomic classes).
The asteroids colors are used to determine some characteristics of asteroid’s surface and to make a first order estimation of its taxonomic type (Fulchignoni et al. 2000). The systems of filters, commonly used are Johnson-Cousins U, B, V, R and I (see Bessell 1979; Cousins 1974; Johnson & Morgan 1953) and Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) u, g, r, i and z (York et al. 2000). But today this method is just for estimations. This type of classification can use up to five points (from 0.3 to 1.0 µm, visible) to assign taxonomic class, compared to the spectral classification, where the range of the wavelengths can be between 0.4 to 2.4 µm (visible and near-infrared) and can have hundreds of points.

Comets

Comets are also small bodies of the Solar System, being composed by nucleus, comma and tail. These objects have large eccentricities and when approaching the Sun, they begin to warm up and they start to release gasses. This process is known as outgassing and it is generated by the solar radiation and solar wind acting on the nucleus.
Until 1994, the system of naming the comets was composed of two steps. The first step was the provisional designation which consists of the discovery year and an alphabetic letter, in the order of discovery (e.g. Comet 1973f was discovered in year 1973 and was the sixth comet discovered in that year). The second step is the permanent designation that is composed of the year of its perihelion and a roman number that indicates the order of the perihelion passage in that year (e.g. Comet 1969i became Comet 1970 II, second comet that pass on perihelion in 1970).
But after 1994, the International Astronomical Union decided to change the naming system, due to the increasing number of discoveries. Now the comets are designated by the discovery year, a letter (indicate the half-month of the discovery) and a number (indicate the order of the discovery). If now one discovers a comet, for example in the first-half of march 2016 and is the first discovery on this time it will be named 2016 E1. Also, prefixes were added to indicate the comet nature:
1. P/ for periodic comets
2. C/ for non periodic comets
3. X/ for comets that orbit that could be calculated
4. D/ for periodic comets that disappeared, broken up, or were lost
5. A/ for minor planets mistaken as comets
6. I/ for interstellar objects (like 1I/Oumuamua8 )
The principal components of a comet that can be studied are: nucleus, coma and tail.
The nucleus is the solid part of a comet and can have dimensions between hundred of meters up to tens of kilometers (see Fig. 1.9). This is composed of rock, dust, ice and frozen gases (carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, methane, and ammonia) (Greenberg 1998). The nucleus can also be named ”dirty snowballs” or ”icy dirtballs”, depending on the concentration of dust. This theory on comet composition starts from Fred Whipple in 1950.
When the comet reaches an approximate distance of 3 or 4 a.u.(solar radia-tion and solar wind start to act on the nucleus) the volatile elements start to outgas, creating a layer of dust and gas, like an atmosphere around the comet, namely coma.
In general, it is composed by water and dust, water being 90% of the volatiles that outflow (Combi et al. 2004) and can reach up to 15 times the Earth diameter.
As the comet approach the inner Solar System and the volatile matter start to outburst from the nucleus, the mater is left behind, forming two tails (the dust tail and the gas tail). The dust tail is left behind the comet orbit, indicating the inverse direction of movement of the comet. In case of the gas tail or ion tail, because it is strongly affected by the solar wind, it points away from the Sun (Lang 2011). The tail may stretch up to one astronomical unit.
Due to their highly eccentric elliptical orbits, the comets can be dynamical classified in two categories: short-period comets and long-period comets. It is be-lieved that short-period comets originate form Kuiper belt while long-period comets originate from Oort cloud (Randall 2015).
Also, an interesting topic is Jupiter family comets. Those objects are short-period comets with low inclination and an orbital period of 20 years. They are called Jupiter family comets because their orbits are primary determined by Jupiter’s gravity and they are believed to originate from Kuiper belt. There are known over 400 objects that belong to this family (objects such as Encke and Halley), but due to their short period, most of them are very faint. Their volatile materials are rapidly depleted due to their multiple trips to the inner Solar System (Lowry et al. 2008).

Table of contents :

1 Introduction 
1.1 Meteor showers
1.1.1 Meteoroids
1.1.2 Meteors
1.1.3 Meteorites
1.2 Asteroids and Comets
1.2.1 Asteroids
1.2.2 Comets
1.3 Known asteroids parent bodies of meteor showers
1.4 Motivation of this thesis
2 Analysis procedure based on dynamical parameters 
2.1 D-criteria associations
2.2 Databases used in the simulations
2.3 Thresholds selections
2.4 Orbital evolution and Lyapunov time
2.5 Objects association probability
3 Planning and telescopic observations 
3.0.1 Visible magnitude limit of telescopes
3.0.2 Airmass
3.1 Observation planing for targets selection
3.1.1 Ephemeride computation
3.1.2 Apparent magnitude computation
3.1.3 Two bodies orbital method vs. full numerical integration
3.2 Data extraction from observation
3.2.1 Photometry with charge coupled devices (CCD)
3.3 Large telescopes
3.3.1 Colors and reflectance extraction
3.3.2 Lightcurve
4 Results 
4.1 Dynamical view
4.1.1 Results of other similar studies
4.2 Physical view
4.2.1 Rotation period contribution
4.2.2 Meteor showers and my associations
4.3 Fallen meteors – Meteor Showers – Asteroids association
4.4 Associated asteroids observed
4.4.1 Asteroid (363599) 2004 FG11
4.4.2 Asteroid (259221) 2003 BA21
4.4.3 Asteroid (85953) 1999 FK21
4.5 Results from observations
4.5.1 Asteroid (363599) 2004 FG11 lightcurve
4.5.2 Asteroid (259221) 2003 BA21 lightcurve
4.5.3 Colors and reflectances of asteroids (363599) 2004 FG11 and 85953) 1999 FK21
5 Conclusions and perspectives 
A Pseudocode
B Objects found in SMASS–MIT UH–IRTF and processed with M4AST
C Meteor showers data used
D D-parameter and Lyapunov time

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