Search for shower's duplicates at the IAU MDC. Methods and general results

TL;DR

This paper develops and applies objective cluster-based methods to identify duplicate and false-duplicate meteor showers in the IAU MDC database, improving the accuracy of shower classification.

Contribution

The authors introduce two new cluster analysis methods and similarity functions for detecting duplicates among meteor showers, replacing subjective approaches.

Findings

Discovered 7 new showers with multiple parameter sets.

Achieved full agreement with MDC in 30 cases.

Identified 56 multi-solution showers with no duplicates found.

Abstract

Observers submit both new and known meteor shower parameters to the database of the IAU Meteor Data Center (MDC). It may happen that a new observation of an already known meteor shower is submitted as a discovery of a new shower. Then, a duplicate shower appears in the MDC. On the other hand, the observers may provide data which, in their opinion, is another set of parameters of an already existing shower. However, if this is not true, we can talk about a shower that is a false-duplicate of a known meteor shower. We aim to develop a method for objective detection of duplicates among meteor showers and apply it to the MDC. The method will also enable us to verify whether various sets of parameters of the same shower are compatible and, thus, reveal the false-duplicates. We suggest two methods based on cluster analyses and two similarity functions among geocentric and heliocentric shower parameters collected in the MDC. 7 new showers represented by two or more parameter sets were discovered. 30 times there was full agreement between our results and those reported in the MDC. 20 times the same duplicates as given in the MDC, were found only by one method. We found 34 multi-solution showers for which the number of the same duplicates found by both method is close to the corresponding number in the MDC database. However for 56 multi-solution showers listed in the MDC no duplicates were found by any of the applied methods. The obtained results confirmed the effectiveness of the proposed approach of identifying duplicates. We have shown that in order to detect and verify duplicate meteor showers, it is possible to apply the objective proposal instead of the subjective approach used so far.