Groups of meteorites and meteorite-dropping fireballs in asteroidal orbits

Abstract

This paper presents the results of a study of the existence of nine near-Earth meteorite-producing groups in asteroidal orbits, containing sporadic (cid:28)reballs from the IAU MDC-2007 database, sporadic meteors from the SonotaCo database, meteorites (cid:22) namely, L 5 , L 6 and H 4 − H 6 ordinary chondrites and an ureilite, for which atmospheric and orbital parameters are known from instrumental observations. Orbits of the selected members of meteorite-producing groups were classi(cid:28)ed as asteroid orbits according to the Tisserand parameter T j > 3 . 1 . Dynamic links between the members of the identi(cid:28)ed meteorite-producing groups and instrumentally observed known meteorites which were taken as a reference for the search of potential group members were tested using orbital similarity criteria, in particular the Drummond criterion (cid:22) D D and the Southworth and Hawkins criterion (cid:22) D SH . As a result, several meteorite-dropping sporadic (cid:28)reballs and small meteors, whose orbits are similar to the asteroid orbits of nine known meteorites, were detected and reckoned as possible members of groups.