Dust trail evolution applied to long-period comet C/1854 L1 (Klinkerfues) and the ε-Eridanids Original Research Article

In recent years, meteor outbursts and storms have greatly increased the likelihood of detection for meteor spectrographs with a small field of view. The successful prediction of the Leonid storms has made the deployment of new spectrographic techniques possible. Here, we apply a prediction model developed for the Leonid storms to the evolution of dust ejected from comet C/1854 L1 (Klinkerfues) in an effort to determine whether the 1981 outburst of ε-Eridanids may have been caused by this comet, and if so to predict future returns. We also investigated the possible link to comet C/962 B2. We find that the 1981 outburst may be explained as a Filament component (10–100 year old dust trails) from comet C/1854 L1, if that comet has an orbital period P ∼ 127 years.