Revisiting the 2014 Camelopardalids Outburst using a Meteor Radar Chain in the Northern Hemisphere

Abstract The Camelopardalids meteor shower (#451, CAM), produced by comet 209P/LINEAR’s historic dust trails, has exhibited a strong outburst only once, on 2014 May 24, since the discovery of the parent body in 2004, and although this event was well predicted, its activity was substantially lower than forecast. Using a meteor radar chain in the northern hemisphere, consisting of five meteor radars spanning from the northeast to the southwest of China, we were able to precisely determine the shower’s radiant as being centered on a region of R.A. = 128 . ° 0 ± 8 . ° 8, decl. = 75 . ° 1 ± 2 . ° 4 (J2000) between UT 05:00 and 13:00. A detailed analysis quantified the shower radiant, duration, velocity, and height from each meteor radar. CAM shower meteors constituted around 10%–20% of the total meteor activity across the radar network with minor site-dependent variations. Orbital parameters with a semimajor axis of ∼2.83 au, eccentricity of ∼0.66, and inclination of ∼19 . ° 0 were consistently derived from the meteor radar chain, further validating the accuracy of past predictions. These joint observations confirmed the dust trail’s dynamical properties despite the shower’s flux being smaller than most of the predictions.