No Meteors from 2020 BZ12 According to Global Meteor Network Orbit Data

Abstract: Examination of Global Meteor Network orbit data for January and February 2021 reveals that evidence for the existence of any meteor shower associated with 2020 BZ₁₂ is lacking.

1 Introduction

In Greaves (2020) it was noted that the minor planet 2020 BZ₁₂ had a comet-like orbit and according to D criteria had a borderline chance of presenting meteors in January 2021, which was post-perihelion.  Caveats included the threshold level of the actual D value suggesting a marginal Earth crossing orbit and that the nature of the orbit could lead to any putative meteors not being due until they returned to the pre-perihelion part of the orbital arc.  Equally it was also noted that candidate meteors existing in the currently extant meteor orbit datasets were too few to sufficiently show then current evidence for such a shower. Accordingly, the full January 2021 and up to late February 2021 orbital data were obtained from the Global Meteor Network (Vida et al., 2019a; 2019b) and tested against the 2020 BZ₁₂ orbit in the same manner as in the original paper.

2 Results

The analysis revealed that according to Global Meteor Network data the number of potentially associated orbits was exactly zero.  Minor caveats include an increasingly problematic waxing moon during the potential shower period until late in the month which was only a few days past Full Moon at month end when the Moon was actually in Virgo, the constellation of the most likely site of the radiant.  On the other hand, the dataset had good nightly coverage throughout the month.

3 Conclusion

Any potential shower associated with 2020 BZ₁₂ is not confirmed in any way by Global Meteor Network data.

Acknowledgement

The Global Meteor Network and its dedicated observers are thanked for making their data not only publicly but promptly accessible as without this data this analysis would not be possible at this time. The data of the Global Meteor Network was used which is released under the CC BY 4.0 license.

References

Greaves J. (2020). “Some Near Earth Objects and meteor associations”. eMetN, 5, 295–299.

Vida D., Gural P., Brown P., Campbell-Brown M., Wiegert P. (2019). “Estimating trajectories of meteors: an observational Monte Carlo approach – I. Theory”. Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 491, 2688–2705.

Vida D., Gural P., Brown P., Campbell-Brown M., Wiegert P. (2019). “Estimating trajectories of meteors: an observational Monte Carlo approach – II. Results”. Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 491, 3996-4011.