The Taurid meteoroid complex
D.J. Asher
D.Phil. thesis, University of Oxford (1992)

Abstract:

Current knowledge of the Taurid complex of interplanetary objects is reviewed, with its dominant presence in the inner Solar System for the past twenty thousand years emphasised. The importance of giant comets, of which the Taurid progenitor is the contemporary example, is discussed.

The efficiency and limits to the validity of techniques to be used are evaluated. These techniques are primarily computational, but analytic descriptions that greatly help to understand dynamical simulations are also presented.

The first main subject concerns passages of the Earth through a meteoroidal swarm observed in some years only. This requires material concentrated in part of its orbit; the proposed mechanism is the 7:2 mean motion resonance with Jupiter. A detailed model is developed, satisfactorily explaining the years, and range of dates within years, of swarm detections. The possibility is investigated that the swarm parent object (presumably the source of the entire Taurid Complex) has also given rise to a prominent cometary dust trail. The likely evolution over the past few millennia of such a parent is calculated to examine its consistency with periodic meteoroid production that could yield a 200-year cyclicity in extraterrestrial input to the Earth.

For the second major study an appropriate method of selecting Taurids from available meteor data is described and computer models are compared to see which evolutionary schemes best reproduce the meteor orbital element distributions. The Taurids are shown to have most probably originated through splitting of large fragments from the parent near perihelion and subsequent disintegration of many of these fragments on collisions in the asteroid belt. That the complex extends to large masses is confirmed by demonstrating that a statistically significant number of Apollo asteroid orbits are aligned with the Taurid stream as defined by meteors.

The possible association of zodiacal dust bands with the Taurid Complex, and a photographic plate search for asteroids in the swarm and dust trail, constitute further topics. Future observations are encouraged to test the swarm and trail theories.

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