Determination of meteor showers on other planets using comet ephemerides

Abstract

Meteor showers on the Earth occur at well known times, and are associated with the decay of comets or other minor bodies whose orbital paths pass close to the Earth's trajectory. On the surface, determining the closest proximity of two orbital paths appears to be a computationally intensive procedure. This paper describes a simple geometric method for determining the proximity between the orbital paths of two bodies (i.e., a comet and a planet) in the solar system from the known ephemerides of the objects. The method is used to determine whether or not meteor showers on other planets in the solar system could be associated with any of 250 known comets.