A 2010 fireball produced by a meteoroid from comet 1P/Halley

Abstract

Comet 1P/Halley is the source of the Orionid and η Aquariid meteor showers [1]. The latter one takes place during the second encounter of the Earth with 1P/Halley debris in October, when our planet is as close as 0.16 AU from the comet's orbit [2]. A striking feature of 1P meteoroid streams is their filamentary structure, which has been explained on the basis of an orbital evolution affected by major planets, particularly Jupiter [3]. Besides, several authors have noted that the activity of the Orionid meteor shower varies significantly from year to year [4, 5]. In fact, it has been a source of important meteor outbursts [6]. The last of these took place in 2006 [7]. In order to increase our knowledge about this stream, the SPanish Meteor Network (SPMN) ha s performed in the recent years a continuous monitoring of the Orionid shower during its activity period by means of high-sensitivity CCD video devices. Thus, for instance, although no remarkable activity was observed during 2010, we could image several fireballs from this shower. In this work we analyze one of these events, which was re- corded together with its emission spectrum on Oct. 23, 2010 at 23h53m09.3 ± 0.1s UTC and was named SPMN 231010