Abstract

We employed a new line-detection method and tried to separate two radiant points corresponding to the dust trails of Comet 55P/Tempel–Tuttle’s perihelion passages in 1699 and 1866. This method integrates the pixel values of a CCD image along a line direction, which enables us to detect 30-times fainter meteors than when using the usual detection methods. It can also precisely determine the angle of the line direction. Two telescopic optics equipped with cooled CCD cameras were pointed to regions that make a right angle with the radiant points in order to precisely determine their positions. Radiant points of the 2001 Leonids derived by this method were found to be consistent with those predicted by McNaught and Asher.

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