Article ID Journal Published Year Pages File Type
5488001 Planetary and Space Science 2017 5 Pages PDF
Abstract
The Earth-crossing asteroid 2015TB145 was discovered on 10 October 2015 and on 31 October 2015 it already approached close to the Earth at the minimal distance. On the base of obtained radio images of the asteroid, the value of an albedo has estimated as p=0.06. Coming from the albedo value and the comet-like orbit, it was suggested, that the object is a dead comet. In order to verify the supposition, the orbital evolution of 2015TB145 was investigated under the perturbing action of major planets for the time interval of 50 kyrs. As a result, it was found that one cycle of variations of the argument of perihelion is equal to nearly 40 kyrs and during this period the object intersects the Earth's orbit eight times, i.e. it is the octuple crosser. Consequently, if the object has a cometary origin, then it can be associated with a meteoroid stream producing eight meteor showers which should be observable on the Earth. Features of the predicted meteor showers, theoretically associated with 2015TB145, were calculated and a search for observable showers identical to predicted ones was realized using all published catalogues. It turned out, that seven of eight predicted showers were identified with the active observable meteor showers. So, comet-like orbit, low value of an albedo and association with the meteoroid stream producing identified showers are strong evidences pointing that 2015TB145 is really inactive comet. A conclusion was made that the potentially hazardous object 2015TB145 is very likely extinct nucleus of a parent comet of the found meteoroid stream.
Related Topics
Physical Sciences and Engineering Earth and Planetary Sciences Geophysics
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