A dynamical analysis of the Taurid Complex: evidence for past orbital convergences

Abstract

The goal of this work is to determine if the dynamics of individual Taurid Complex (TC) objects are consistent with the formation of the complex via fragmentation of a larger body, or if the current orbital affinities between the TC members result from other dynamical processes. To this end, the orbital similarity through time of comet 2P/Encke, fifty-one Near-Earth Asteroids (NEAs) and sixteen Taurid fireballs was explored. Clones of each body were numerically simulated backwards in time, and epochs when significant fractions of the clones of any two bodies approached each other with both a low Minimum Orbit Intersection Distance and small relative velocity were identified. Only twelve pairs of bodies in our sample show such an association in the past 20 000 years, primarily circa 3200 BCE. These include 2P/Encke and NEAs 2004 TG10, 2005 TF50, 2005 UR, 2015 TX24, and several Southern Taurid fireballs. We find this orbital convergence to be compatible with the fragmentation of a large parent body five to six thousand years ago, resulting in the separation of 2P/Encke and several NEAs associated with the TC, as well as some larger meteoroids now recorded in the Taurid stream. However, the influence of purely dynamical processes may offer an alternative explanation for this orbital rapprochement without requiring a common origin between these objects. In order to discriminate between these two hypotheses, future spectral surveys of the TC asteroids are required.

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“…Another is now seen as a cometary debris field known as the Taurid Complex, composed of Comet Encke, an array of meteor streams, and ~90 asteroids with diameters of 1.5 to 5 km in similar orbits [83]. The measured light curves of 34 of the associated asteroids [87] and the mass and spread of the Complex, when the derivative zodiacal dust and its possible loss rate are estimated, indicate that the Complex represents the remains of a ~100-km-wide progenitor comet whose disintegration and dispersion has continued for at least the last ~20,000 years [88][89][90][91]. These data confirm and strengthen an early proposal by Whipple that Comet Encke is the progenitor of much of the meteoroid population in the inner solar system [92].…”