Introduction
Meteoroids 2019 in Bratislava, Slovakia, was the 10th conference on meteor astronomy since the first Meteoroids conference was organized in Smolenice, Slovakia in July 1992. The 2019 event was organized by the Comenius University in Bratislava with assistance by the colleagues of the Astronomical Institute of the SAS. 129 participants registered for this conference.
Sunday, June 16, participants started to arrive at the conference site at Hotel Tatra in Bratislava. Registrations started with a welcome drink that offered excellent circumstances to talk with many people about the latest news and challenges in the meteor world (Figure 1).
A conference is more than just a series of oral and poster presentations, most of the time is spent on informal contacts and private discussions with meteor specialists. In this report we give a short overview of the different sessions.
The program with all presentations with links to the abstracts in PDF can be found online (https://fmph.uniba.sk/en/microsites/daa/division-of-astronomy-and-astrophysics/meteoroids-2019/program/).
Figure 1 – Sunday evening welcome reception (credit LOC Meteoroids).
Monday, June 17
The conference was opened by the dean of Faculty Mathematics, Physics and Informatics, Comenius University in Bratislava. The President of IAU commission F1, Diego Janches (Figure 2) and Juraj Toth, Head of the LOC welcomed everyone to the 10th meeting of Meteoroids. At this occasion some memories were refreshed with photographs of the very first Meteoroids conference that took place 27 years ago in Smolenice during July 1992, also in Slovakia.
Figure 2 – The President of IAU commission F1, Diego Janches during his opening speech of the 10th Meteoroids conference (Credit LOC Meteoroids).
Figure 3 – Galina Ryabova informed the audience about the status of the Meteoroids book (crecit LOC Meteoroids).
Galina Ryabova announced the publication of a new standard work on meteor astronomy which can be temporary ordered with a 20% reduction. More about this Meteoroids book can be found on MeteorNews.
Figure 4 – Iwan Williams with the invited lecture about astronomy and astronomers at the Slovak Institutes of Astronomy (credit LOC Meteoroids).
Iwan Williams (Figure 4) presented a first invited lecture about “Astronomers and Astronomy at the Slovak Institutes of Astronomy”.
A short overview of the presentations is given with a link to the abstract concerning the oral presentation.
First Session
The first session “Meteoroid sources” was chaired by Maria Hajdukova and Robert Jedicke. This session focused on meteoroid parent bodies and the release of meteoroids. Junichi Watanabe presented some reports about short lived locally observed meteor hurricanes and David Clark (Figure 7) pointed the attention to the opportunities in 2019 to observe NEOs associated with the Taurid swarm. Before the lunch everybody was invited to walk in front of the Presidential Palace for the group photo (Figure 8). The following presentations were given:
- Jessica Agarwal of the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research in Germany presented “Meteoroid production by Asteroids”.
- Junichi Watanabe of the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan presented “Meteor ‘Hurricanes’ and Possible Behavior of Parent Bodies”.
- Nicholas Moskovitz of the Lowell Observatory in the United States talked about “Identification of Recent Near-Earth Asteroid Disruption Events: Implications for the Earth’s Meteor Environment”.
- Peter Jenniskens (Figure 5) of the SETI Institute in the United States presented “Asteroid Vesta and the source of 22-Ma clan HED meteorites”.
- David Clark of the University of Western Ontario in Canada presented “2019 observing opportunity for Taurid Swarm NEOs”.
- Juan Sebastian Bruzzone of the Catholic University of America in the United States presented “Radar and optical observations of meteor showers, a comparative study”.
- Mikael Granvik of the University of Helsinki / Luleå University of Technology in Finland presented “Identification of meteorite source regions in the Solar System”.
- Jeremie Vaubaillon of the IMCCE, Paris Observatory, PSL in France presented “The need for robust method to identify meteor showers”.
Figure 5 – Peter Jenniskens during his talk about asteroid Vesta and the source of 22-Ma clan HED meteorites (credit LOC Meteoroids).
Figure 6 – The conference room of Meteoroids 2019 (credit LOC Meteoroids).
Figure 7 – David Clark of the University of Western Ontario in Canada presented “2019 observing opportunity for Taurid Swarm NEOs”.
Before the lunch everybody was invited to walk in front of the Presidential Palace for the group photo.
Figure 8 – The Meteoroids 2019 group photo in front of the Presidential Palace (credit LOC Meteoroids).
Second Session
The second session “Future Methods and Techniques” was chaired by Galina Ryabova and Peter Veres. This session covered all aspects of improvements in measurements, instruments and tools with several presentations of ongoing efforts to improve the meteor observing methods. Denis Vida (Figure 9) presented an impressive talk about Ultra high precision meteor trajectories obtained using the Canadian Automated Meteor Observatory tracking system”.
- Pierre Kokou of the European Space Agency in the Netherlands presented “Lightning Imager: an upcoming spaceborne sensor with potential for meteor detection”
- Danielle Moser of Jacobs Engineering in the United States presented “Bolides detected by GLM and ground-based meteor networks”.
- Denis Vida of the University of Western Ontario in Canada presented “Ultra high precision meteor trajectories obtained using the Canadian Automated Meteor Observatory tracking system”.
- Juraj Toth of the Comenius University in Bratislava in Slovakia presented “AMOS meteor global network”.
- Eleanor Sansom of the Space Science and Technology Centre, Curtin University in Australia presented “Visualising the fate of DFN fireballs using the alpha-ß plot”.
- Carsten Schult of the Leibniz-Institute of Atmospheric Physics, Rostock University in Germany presented “Dual frequency head echo measurements and optical observations of faint meteoroids at Northern polar latitudes”.
- Aaron Kingery of the Jacobs Engineering in the United States presented “Tools for Responding to Meteors of Public Interest”.
- Gerhard Drolshagen of the University Oldenburg in Germany presented “Monte-Carlo simulations of meteor orbit computations”.
Figure 9 – Denis Vida of the University of Western Ontario, Canada presented “Ultra high precision meteor trajectories obtained using the Canadian Automated Meteor Observatory tracking system” (credit LOC Meteoroids).
Thuesday, June 18
Third session
The third session “Meteor Physics and Chemistry” was chaired by Jiří Borovička and Diego Janches. This session focused on the physics of a meteoroid flight in the atmosphere. The talks covered a wide variety of topics about laboratory experiments, fireball characteristics, crater structures on other planets and meteor modelling. One of the talks covered a very interesting topic of simultaneous optical and specular radar measurements of low speed meteors by Peter Brown.
- Stefan Loehle of the HEFDiG, University of Stuttgart in Germany (invited) presented “Laboratory Ablation Experiments”.
- Lukáš Shrbený of the Astronomical Institute of the Czech Academy of Sciences in the Czech Republic presented “Fireball fragmentation in the first half of the atmospheric trajectory”.
- Olga Popova of the Institute for Dynamics of Geospheres in Russia presented “Fresh Impact Craters and Clusters on Mars”.
- John Plane of the University of Leeds in United Kingdom presented “A ‘New’ Meteoric Element: Phosphorous”.
- Luke McFadden of the University of Western Ontario in Canada presented “Seismo-acoustic Measurements of Bolides”.
- Robert Marshall of the University of Colorado Boulder in the United States presented “Improved Characterization of Meteor Luminous Efficiency through Laboratory Experiments”.
- Alexander Kozlovski of the Sodankyla Geophysical Observatory in Finland presented “Ten years of the meteor radar observations in Lapland”.
- Chang Yu Sung of the Western University in Canada presented “Detection of VLF emissions from meteors”.
- Gunter Stober of the Leibniz-Institute for Atmospheric Physics in Germany presented “Full wave scattering modelling for transverse scattering meteor observations and specular meteor measurements with MAARSY”.
- Pavlo Kozak of the Astronomical Observatory, Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv in Ukraine presented “Grazing atmosphere meteors: observation results, physical modeling of the flight, and probability to detect”.
- Diego Janches of the GSFC/NASA in the United States presented “A Decade of Sporadic Meteoroid Mass Distribution Indices in the Southern Hemisphere Derived from SAAMER’s Meteor Observations”.
- Bruno Dias of the von Karman Institute for Fluid Dynamics/UCL in Belgium “Non-equilibrium meteor entry: in search of the coefficients of interest to improve meteor modelling”.
- Peter Brown of the Western University in Canada presented “Simultaneous optical and specular radar measurements of low speed meteors”.
After lunch the session “Meteor Physics and Chemistry” was continued and chaired Margaret Campbell-Brown and Aswin Sekhar.
- Federico Bariselli of the von Karman Institute for Fluid Dynamics in Belgium presented “Ionization coefficients resulting from the direct molecular simulation of meteor entry flows”.
- Taylor Armitage of the University of Western Ontario in Canada presented “Using High-Resolution Observations to Constrain the Grain Mass Distribution of Small Meteoroids”.
Fourth session
The fourth session “Influx of Interplanetary and Interstellar Matter” was chaired by Margaret Campbell-Brown and Aswin Sekhar. This session was dedicated to models, observations, constraints on shower, sporadic, and interstellar meteoroids and dust. Mária Hajduková Jr. of the Astronomical Institute, Slovak Academy of Sciences gave a very interesting presentation about “Interstellar Meteors”. The 2018 Draconid outburst got attention by Margaret Campbell-Brown of the University of Western Ontario presenting “Radar fluxes of Draconid meteor outbursts”. Then, Pavel Koten of the Astronomical Institute in the Czech Republic presented “Different masses of Draconids”. The profile presented by Pavel Koten compares very well with the analyses of visual data (Miskotte, 2019).
- Mária Hajduková Jr. of the Astronomical Institute, Slovak Academy of Sciences, Slovakia presented “Interstellar Meteors”.
- Mark Froncisz of the University of Western Ontario in Canada presented “Searching for interstellar meteoroids in Canadian Meteor Orbit Radar data”.
- Juan Diego Carrillo Sánchez of the University of Leeds in the United Kingdom presented “Cosmic dust fluxes in the atmospheres of Earth, Mars, and Venus”.
- Margaret Campbell-Brown of the University of Western Ontario in Canada presented “Radar fluxes of Draconid meteor outbursts”.
- Pavel Koten of the Astronomical Institute in the Czech Republic presented “Different masses of Draconids”.
- Logan Dewsnap of the Western University in Canada presented “Characterizing the daytime Taurid meteor showers”.
- Martin Baláž of the Comenius University in Bratislava in Slovakia presented “Determination of Meteoroid Flux from Meteor Data Debiased by Numerical Simulation”.
- Vladimír Porubčan of the Comenius University in Bratislava in Slovakia presented “Smolenice 1992 – commented video footage from the first Meteoroids conference”.
Figure 10 – Diego Janches of the GSFC/NASA during his talk “A Decade of Sporadic Meteoroid Mass Distribution Indices in the Southern Hemisphere Derived from SAAMER’s Meteor Observations” (credit LOC Meteoroids).
Figure 11 – Vladimír Porubčan commented the video about the first Meteoroids conference at the castle of Smolenice in July 1992 (credit LOC Meteoroids).
Wednesday, June 19
Fifth session
The fifth session “Dynamical Evolution” was chaired by Althea Moorhead and Jeremie Vaubaillon. This session covered all aspects of dynamical evolution of meteoroids and meteoroid streams in space. The first talk by Auriane Egal of the Western University “Modelling meteor showers: future Draconid outbursts” was of particular interest to amateur meteor observers.
James Kinsman presented “Orbital dynamics of highly probable but rare Orionid outbursts possibly observed by the ancient Maya”. An interesting research on old Maya records that described meteor outbursts.
- Auriane Egal of the Western University in Canada presented “Modelling meteor showers: future Draconid outbursts”.
- Patrick Shober of the Curtin University in Australia presented “Mini-Moon Fireball Detected by the Desert Fireball Network”.
- Aswin Sekhar of the Armagh Observatory and Planetarium in the United Kingdom “Kozai Mechanism Vs GR Precession in Daytime Arietids (ARI)”.
- James Kinsman from Gainesville in the United States presented “Orbital dynamics of highly probable but rare Orionid outbursts possibly observed by the ancient Maya”.
Sixth session
The sixth session “Planetary Defense” was chaired by Althea Moorhead and Jeremie Vaubaillon. This session focused on super-bolides, airbursts, craters, and impact hazard mitigation.
Wednesday afternoon was reserved for socializing with a boat trip on the Danube river. After a short walk through the historic part of Bratislava, all participants got on board of a ship for a trip along the river with as main destination the Devin castle situated at the confluence of the Danube and Morava rivers (Figures 12 to 16).
- Lorien Wheeler of the NASA Ames Research Center, RedLine Performancein the United States presented “Advancing Asteroid Threat Assessment”.
- Robert Weryk of the University of Hawaii in the United States presented “Finding the largest meteoroids with the Pan-STARRS survey”.
- Sarah McMullan of the Imperial College London in the United Kingdom presented “Asteroid to Airburst; Comparing Semi-analytical Airburst Models to Hydrocodes”.
- Toshi Kasuga of the Kyoto Sangyo University / NAOJ in Japan presented “Is a Fireball from Near-Earth Binary Asteroid (164121) 2003 YT1?”
- Tadeusz Jopek of the Institute Astronomicasl Observatory UAM in Poland presented “Orbital similarity among the near Earth asteroids”.
- George Flynn of the State University of NY-Plattsburgh in the United States presented “Laboratory Experiments on Kinetic Impactor Deflection of Bennu-like Asteroids”.
After the excursion everybody enjoyed the conference dinner which started on the tunes of Star Wars performed by a quartet on strings (Figures 17 to 21).
Figure 12 – Sightseeing along the border between Slovakia and Austria on the Danube river (credit LOC Meteoroids).
Figure 13 – The warm weather was perfectly timed to enjoy the boat trip in open air (credit Adriana Roggemans).
Figure 14 – Old and less old borders, in front a monument for those who died when trying to escape socialist rule, in the background a tower of the castle at a strategic position (credit LOC Meteoroids).
Figure 15 – The guided tour at the Devin castle (credit LOC Meteoroids).
Figure 16 – A view on the confluence of the Morava river into the danube (credit LOC Meteoroids).
Figure 17 – The conference organizer, Juraj Toth and The President of IAU commission F1, Diego Janches (credit LOC Meteoroids).
Figure 18 – Opening of the conference dinner on the tunes of Star Wars (credit LOC Meteoroids).
Figure 19 – From left to right: Chie Tsuchiya, Yasunori Fujiwara, Takumi Sato, Masa-yuki Yamamoto and Paul Roggemans (credit Adriana Roggemans).
Figure 20 – The Slovak team with the members of the LOC (credit LOC Meteoroids).
Figure 21 – From left to right Hadrien Devillepoix, Auriane Egal, Jean-Louis Rault, Mária Hajduková and Galina Ryabova (credit LOC Meteoroids).
Thursday, June 20
Seventh session
The seventh session “Composition and Physical Properties” was chaired by Olga Popova and Robert Macke. This session was dedicated to measurements and models of the physical properties of meteoroids, meteorites, micrometeorites and dust particles. This session had several interesting talks. Solvay Blomquist of the Lowell Observatory presented “Analysis of Meteor Light Curves from LO-CAMS Detections”. A topic of particular interest for people involved with CAMS. Jiří Borovička of the Astronomical Institute of the Czech Academy of Sciences presented another very interesting study on “Physical properties of Taurid meteoroids of various sizes”.
- Matthew Genge from the Imperial College London in the United Kingdom presented “Micrometeorites – what they can and can’t tell us”.
- Pavel Povinec of the Comenius University in Bratislava in Slovakia presented “Cosmogenic radionuclides in meteorites: Temporal and space variations”.
- David Čapek of the Astronomical Institute of the Czech Academy of Sciences in the Czech Republic presented “Small iron meteoroids: Observation and modeling of meteor light curves”.
- Vlastimil Vojáček of the Astronomical Institute of the Czech Academy of Sciences in the Czech Republic presented “The properties of cm-sized iron meteoroids”.
- Pavol Matlovič of the Comenius University in Bratislava in Slovakia presented “Spectral survey of mm-m sized meteoroids”.
- Anna Kartashova of the Institute of Astronomy, Russian Academy of Sciences in Russia presented “Results of meteor observations by multi-technique registrations”.
- Gerhard Drolshagen of the University Oldenburg in Germany presented “Velocity distribution of asteroids and larger meteoroids and impacting Earth”.
- Solvay Blomquist of the Lowell Observatory in the United States presented “Analysis of Meteor Light Curves from LO-CAMS Detections”.
- Jiří Borovička of the Astronomical Institute of the Czech Academy of Sciences in the Czech Republic presented “Physical properties of Taurid meteoroids of various sizes”.
Eight session
The eight session and very short session with only two talks “Dust Particles and Clouds in the Solar System and Beyond” was chaired by Olga Popova and Robert Macke. This session focused on dust particles in the Solar System and stellar systems.
- Jeremie Lasue of the IRAP-CNRS in France presented “Zodiacal dust properties inferred from observations”.
- Zoltan Sternovsky of the University of Colorado in the United States presented “FOSSIL – Fragments from the Origins of our Solar System: Exploring the Chemical Diversity of Comets, Asteroids, and Interstellar Dust at 1 AU”.
Ninth session
The ninth session “Meteoroid Impact Physics and Meteorite Recoveries” was chaired by Robert Weryk and Shinsuke Abe. This session focused on meteoroids striking natural objects. Pavel Spurný of the Astronomical Institute of the Czech Academy of Sciences, Ondrejov gave a summary of some recent meteorite recoveries “The Hradec Králové (CZ) and Renchen (DE) meteorite falls – recovery of meteorites exactly according to prediction based on records taken by the European Fireball Network”.
- Tomoko Arai of the Chiba Institute of Technology in Japan presented “DESTINY+ mission: Flyby of Geminids parent asteroid Phaethon”.
- Petr Pokorny of The Catholic University of America in the United States presented “Meteoroids at the Moon”.
- Ryota Fuse of the Nihon University in Japan presented “Spectroscopic Study of Luminous Efficiency using Hypervelocity Impact Experiment toward understanding Lunar Impact Flash Phenomena”.
- Masahisa Yanagisawa of the The University of Electro-Communications in Japan presented “Low-dispersion spectra of lunar impact flashes in 2018 Geminids”.
- Shinsuke Abe of the Nihon University in Japan presented “Lunar impact flash observation of Geminids and application to lunar impact monitoring from deep space”.
- Hadrien Devillepoix of the Curtin University in Australia presented “A Global Fireball Observatory”.
- Pavel Spurný of the Astronomical Institute of the Czech Academy of Sciences, Ondrejov in the Czech Republic presented “The Hradec Králové (CZ) and Renchen (DE) meteorite falls – recovery of meteorites exactly according to prediction based on records taken by the European Fireball Network”.
Figure 22 – Hadrien Devillepoix of the Curtin University in Australia during his talk “A Global Fireball Observatory” (credit LOC Meteoroids).
Friday, June 21
Tenth session
The tenth session “In-situ Experiments and Spacecraft Anomalies” was chaired by Eleanor Sansom and Jiří Šilha. This session focused on meteoroids striking spacecraft.
- The tenth session “In-situ Experiments and Spacecraft Anomalies” was chaired by Eleanor Sansom and Jiří Šilha.
- Althea Moorhead of the NASA Meteoroid Environment Office in the United States presented “Recreating in situ measurements of potentially hazardous meteoroids”.
- Althea Moorhead of the NASA Meteoroid Environment Office in the United States presented “Meteoroid and orbital debris fluxes in Earth orbit”.
- Maximilian Kellner of the Technichal University of Munich (TUM), Chair of Astronautics in Germany presented “Columbus Crater Survey – Analyzing the small particle environment in low Earth orbit via impact craters on the European Columbus module of the International Space Station”.
Eleventh session
The eleventh session “Future Methods and Techniques” was chaired by Eleanor Sansom and Jiří Šilha. This session covered all recent or planned improvements in meteor measurements, including instrumentation, observations, and data analysis. A very interesting talk was presented by Tomoko Arai of the Chiba Institute of Technology in Japan with “METEOR: Space-based meteor observation project”. Also, Georgy Sambarov (Figure 23) had an interesting talk about the evolution of the Quadrantid meteor stream.
- Tomoko Arai of the Chiba Institute of Technology in Japan presented “METEOR: Space-based meteor observation project”.
- Nagatoshi Nogami of the IMO in Japan presented “Impact hazards by meteorites smaller than several ten meters”.
- Georgy Sambarov of the Research Institute of Applied Mathematics and Mechanics, Tomsk State University in Russia presented “Analysis of the dynamical evolution of the Quadrantid meteor stream between AD 1760 and 2020”.
- Anny-Chantal Levasseur-Regourd of the LATMOS – Sorbonne Université in France presented “Joining efforts between studies of cometary dust and meteoroids?”.
Figure 23 – Georgy Sambarov of the Research Institute of Applied Mathematics and Mechanics, Tomsk State University in Russia presented “Analysis of the dynamical evolution of the Quadrantid meteor stream between AD 1760 and 2020” (credit LOC Meteoroids).
Figure 24 – A look in the poster room (credit LOC Meteoroids).
Figure 25 – Peter Gural presented “Advances in the Meteor Image Processing Chain using Fast Algorithms, Deep Learning, and Empirical Fitting” (credit LOC Meteoroids).
Twelfth session
The twelfth session “Future Methods and Techniques” was chaired by Danielle Moser and Junichi Watanabe. This session covered recent or planned improvements in meteor measurements, including instrumentation, observations, and data analysis. Pete Gural (Figure 25) highlighted recent developments in meteor image processing. Michael Hankey gave an impressive overview of the multitude of possibilities his new system is offering with his talk “The All-Sky-6 and Video Meteor Archive System of the AMS Ltd.”.
The final talk of the conference was given by Ryou Ohsawa of the University of Tokyo in Japan “Radar and optical simultaneous observations of faint meteors with MU radar and Tomo-e Gozen”.
- Svitlana Kolomiyets of the Kharkiv National University of Radio Electronics in Ukraine presented “Astronomical and geophysical meteor observations: past, present, future”.
- Dakota Cecil of the University of Western Ontario in Canada presented “Using Convolutional Neural Networks to Automatically Filter Meteor Events from the Canadian Automated Meteor Observatory”.
- Steven Ehlert of the Jacobs Engineering in the United States presented “Measuring Fluxes of the Most Active Meteor Showers with an All Sky Video Camera Network”.
- Peter Gural of the Gural Software and Analysis LLC in the United States presented “Advances in the Meteor Image Processing Chain using Fast Algorithms, Deep Learning, and Empirical Fitting”.
- Michael Hankey of the Mike Hankey, LLCc in the United States presented “The All-Sky-6 and Video Meteor Archive System of the AMS Ltd.”
- Simon Jeanne IMCCE – Observatoire de Paris France presented “Fripon nework, first results and error estimation”.
- Ryou Ohsawa of the University of Tokyo in Japan presented “Radar and optical simultaneous observations of faint meteors with MU radar and Tomo-e Gozen”.
Figure 26 – Juraj Toth and Diego Janches closing the 10th Meteoroids conference (credit LOC Meteoroids).
A Conference summary was presented, and the Conference closed by Diego Janches (SOC) and Juraj Toth (LOC). The participants thanked the organizers with a warm applause for their great efforts and excellent organization of this most interesting conference.
The next Meteoroids conference will be organized in 2022 in Alabama, USA.
References
Miskotte K. (2019). “The outburst of the Draconid meteor shower in 2018: an analysis”. eMetN, 4, 74–78.
