Relationship between 2003 EH1 and two Historical Comets

Details Relationship between 2003 EH1 and two Historical Comets Relationship between 2003 EH1 and two Historical Comets

Sep 2008

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2008dps....40.2703m&link_type=abstract

American Astronomical Society, DPS meeting #40, #27.03; Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, Vol. 40, p.434

Astronomy and Astrophysics

Astronomy

Scientific paper

The asteroid 2003 EH1, discovered in March 2003 during the LONEOS survey, is believed to be the parent body of the Quadrantid meteor stream. Because of this connection, it has been suspected to be related with some past cometary objects; an identification with the historical comets C/1490 Y1 and C/1385 U1 has been proposed, but the astrometric observations spanning only 10 months prevented a realistic confirmation of any possible linkage.
In April 2008 we recovered the object using the University of Hawaii 2.2 m telescope on Mauna Kea, obtaining 7 astrometric positions during 2 nights. These data extended the observed arc by a factor of about 5, allowing a comparable reduction in the orbital uncertainty and making possible a realistic comparison with the historical comets. We generated synthetic clones of the object adding gaussian random noise to each astrometric observation, and generating the best-fit orbit for each of these new stochastic astrometric sets. Each orbit was then integrated back to the perihelion dates of the two comets, taking into account major gravitational perturbations.
From each integrated orbit we computed the coordinates of the clone in the plane of the sky during the observed historical apparition, and compared them with the information from the ancient records. For the 1491 apparition, all our clones are at 85° or more from the reported cometary position. For the 1385 apparition the clones are more widely disperse in the plane of the sky, but the closest is still 65° from the observed position of the comet. An estimation of the nongravitational forces needed to compensate for these differences produces unreasonably high values. Therefore, our new observations seem to exclude the identification of 2003 EH1 with the two historical objects.
Our observations were funded by grant AST 0709500 from the NSF.

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