Specialists from St. Petersburg studied the history of the Geminids
The age of the Geminids meteor shower was clarified by scientists from St. Petersburg State University thanks to the mathematical model they built. It turned out that the stream was formed 1600 years ago.
Recall that the Geminids are one of the active meteor showers that can be observed in the sky from December 4 to 17.
It is the brainchild of called the parent body, which means the asteroid Phaeton, discovered in 1983.
There is a hypothesis that the 6-kilometer Phaeton was a comet in the past (this is evidenced by its rather elongated orbit), but over time it lost all its ice, periodically flying by past our star.
Phaeton was believed to be about 20 thousand years old. As for its “star rain,” scientists had serious discrepancies regarding its age.
In particular, many preliminary calculations of the age of the particles of this body themselves spoke of their younger age. But it was impossible to say exactly how old they were. The problem of accurate calculation was that astronomers did not have an understanding of what part of the stream they were observing — its center or individual meteoroids on its periphery, from which it is difficult to judge the age of the entire “star shower”.
Astronomers St. -Petersburg University found a way to solve the problem.
To do this, they used data on meteors from observers from all over the world, both from Russia and from other countries: Japan, America, and a number of European countries. Thus, scientists obtained a large sample of Geminid meteors.
The researchers included all their known orbits in their formula, identifying those that passed most closely from each other. Using such “bouquets” of Geminid particles, experts clarified the age of the stream.