The night of Jan 12/12 saw a pair of meteors from the Xi Corona Borealids (XCB) and Northern Delta Cancrids (NCC). The XCB were first found by the Canadian Meteor Orbit Radar (CMOR) in 2008. They appear to have been created by a long-period comet on a highly inclined (~125°) orbit with a perihelion of 0.82 AU. The parent comet is currently unknown.
The NCCs were first referenced back in 1971. Their orbits have a very small inclination of 0° and 0.45 AU perihelion. The small inclination suggests the possibility of a short-period comet or near-Earth asteroid as the source. So far there are no strong candidates for a parent though the NEA 1991 AQ has been suggested. Unfortunately 1991 AQ is not a carbonaceous asteroid and so is not of a cometary origin.
There is also another new meteor shower that the software is monitoring, the ISONids (ISO). These are meteors produced from last year’s ‘Comet of the Century’, C/2012 S1 (ISON). Even though ISON eventually fizzled out while rounding the Sun it is possible that dust released by the comet may end up on shorter orbits and encounter Earth around this time of the year in the future.
Obs Date(UT) Time TOT SPO ANT COM DLM NCC XCB ISO SAL 2014-01-13 10h 35m 24 17 1 1 1 1 1 0 SAL 2014-01-14 11h 55m 17 15 0 1 1 0 0 0 SAL - SALSA3 camera in Tucson (Carl Hergenrother) VIS - Visual observations from Tucson (Carl Hergenrother) Time - Total amount of time each camera looked for meteors TOT - Total number of meteors detected SPO - Sporadics (meteors not affiliated with any particular meteor shower) ANT - Antihelions COM - Coma Berenicids DLM - December Leonis Minorids NCC - Northern Delta Cancrids XCB - Xi Corona Borealids
The Transient Sky - Comets, Asteroids, Meteors 