IAU Meteor Data Center | the shower database: a status report

TL;DR

This paper provides a comprehensive status update on the IAU Meteor Data Center's shower database, including recent additions, nomenclature updates, and data verification efforts over the past three years.

Contribution

It reports on the current state, recent updates, and methodological improvements of the IAU Meteor Data Center's meteor shower database.

Findings

112 established showers in the database

18 showers officially accepted by IAU in 2015

Database supplemented with historical data for verification

Abstract

Currently, the meteor shower part of Meteor Data Center database includes: 112 established showers, 563 in the working list, among them 36 have the pro tempore status. The list of shower complexes contains 25 groups, 3 have established status and 1 has the pro tempore status. In the past three years, new meteor showers submitted to the MDC database were detected amongst the meteors observed by CAMS stations (Cameras for Allsky Meteor Surveillance), those included in the EDMOND (European viDeo MeteOr Network Database), those collected by the Japanese SonotaCo Network, recorded in the IMO (International Meteor Organization) database, observed by the Croatian Meteor Network and on the Southern Hemisphere by the SAAMER radar. At the XXIXth General Assembly of the IAU in Honolulu, Hawaii in 2015, the names of 18 showers were officially accepted and moved to the list of established ones. Also, one shower already officially named (3/SIA the Southern iota Aquariids) was moved back to the working list of meteor showers. At the XXIXth GA IAU the basic shower nomenclature rule was modified, the new formulation predicates \The general rule is that a meteor shower (and a meteoroid stream) should be named after the constellation that contains the nearest star to the radiant point, using the possessive Latin form". Over the last three years the MDC database was supplemented with the earlier published original data on meteor showers, which permitted verification of the correctness of the MDC data and extension of bibliographic information. Slowly but surely new database software options are implemented, and software bugs are corrected.