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Searching for the Parent of the Tunguska Cosmic Body

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Advances in Meteoroid and Meteor Science

Abstract

We present the results of an extensive study of the Tunguska Cosmic Body (TCB) origin on dynamical grounds. To identify the TCB parent, or a plausible candidate, we applied the well-known concept of dynamical similarity whereby we have compared the geocentric and heliocentric dynamical parameters of a selected set of the Near Earth Objects (NEOs) and TCB particles. First, we made use the idea of Kresak by comparing geocentric coordinates of the TCB radiant with those of the NEOs. Second, we studied the long-term dynamical evolution of all NEOs and TCB particles searching for similarities between their heliocentric orbits. As a general result, we observed many more similar cases and a different pattern of the high orbital similarity among the TCB particles and the asteroid orbits than we did for comets.

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Acknowledgements

TJJ was partly supported by the KBN Project 2 PO3D 007 22, and his visit in Nice was funded by the Observatoire de la Côte d’Azur. The authors wish to thank Professor Frans J.M. Rietmeijer for his suggestions for the improvement of this paper. Also we acknowledge referees David Asher and the anonymous one for their comments and for meticulously checking the details of the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Tadeusz Jan Jopek .

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Jopek, T.J., Froeschlé, C., Gonczi, R., Dybczyński, P.A. (2007). Searching for the Parent of the Tunguska Cosmic Body. In: Trigo-Rodríguez, J.M., Rietmeijer, F.J.M., Llorca, J., Janches, D. (eds) Advances in Meteoroid and Meteor Science. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-78419-9_8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-78419-9_8

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