V. Porubcan et G. Cevolani, ON THE ACTIVITY AND ORBIT OF THE GEMINIDS METEOROID STREAM, Nuovo cimento della Societa italiana di fisica. C, Geophysics and space physics, 17(2), 1994, pp. 243-248
The activity of the Geminids meteor shower is studied on the basis of
radio observations carried out by the Budrio meteor radar in 1986. The
1986 Geminids have displayed as a distinct meteor shower with an asym
metric curve of activity, the duration between the points of one-quart
er strength being 6 days and the maximum at the solar longitude of abo
ut 260.75-degrees (1950.0). The mean orbit and radiant ephemeris of th
e Geminids are derived on the basis of 191 precise photographic orbits
available from the IAU Meteor Data Centre in Lund. Over a time span o
f 50 years, the semi-major axis, eccentricity and perihelion distance
of the stream exhibit variations following the trend of the stream evo
lution suggested by Williams and Wu.