Possible interstellar meteoroids detected by the Canadian Meteor Orbit Radar

Abstract

We examine meteoroid orbits recorded by the Canadian Meteor Orbit Radar (CMOR) from 2012 to 2019, consisting of just over 11 million orbits in a search for potential interstellar meteoroids. Our 7.5 year survey consists of an integrated time-area product of ~ 7× 106 ​km2 hours. Selecting just over 160000 six station meteor echoes having the highest measured velocity accuracy from within our sample, we found five candidate interstellar events. These five potential interstellar meteoroids were found to be hyperbolic at the 2σ-level using only their raw measured speed. Applying a new atmospheric deceleration correction algorithm developed for CMOR, we show that all five candidate events were likely hyperbolic at better than 3σ, the most significant being a 3.7σ detection. Assuming all five detections are true interstellar meteoroids, we estimate the interstellar meteoroid flux at Earth to be at least 6.6 × 10−7 meteoroids/km2/hr appropriate to a mass of 2 × 10−7kg.Using estimated measurement uncertainties directly extracted from CMOR data, we simulated CMOR’s ability to detect a hypothetical ‘Oumuamua - associated hyperbolic meteoroid stream. Such a stream was found to be significant at the 1.8σ level, suggesting that CMOR would likely detect such a stream of meteoroids as hyperbolic. We also show that CMOR’s sensitivity to interstellar meteoroid detection is directionally dependent.