2009MNRAS.400.1389L

The Quadrantid shower, one of the most intense showers, has been observed at the beginning of January each year. However, the origin of the meteors is still unknown. It was Hasegawa who first suggested comet C/1490 Y1 to be the likely origin of the shower based on the historical records of East Asia. We analyse the records of Jo-Seon-Wang-Jo-Sil-Lok (the Annals of the Joseon Dynasty in ancient Korea) and calculate the preliminary orbital elements of comet C/1490 Y1 using a modified Gauss method. We find that comet C/1490 Y1 was a periodic one and its orbital path was very similar to that of the Quadrantid meteor stream. The determined orbital elements are perihelion passage time T_p= 2265652.2983 d (1491 January 7.8 in ut), perihelion distance q = 0.769au, eccentricity e = 0.747, semimajor axis a = 3.04au, argument of perihelion, longitude of ascending node and inclination for the epoch of J2000.0. We therefore conclude that our result verifies the suggestion that comet C/1490 Y1 is the origin of the Quadrantid meteor shower, but was a periodic comet. We discuss a possible link between this comet and the asteroid 2003 EH₁ as well.