Giving the status of an established shower to a meteor shower means that we are dealing
with a real stream and that its parameters (radiant coordinates, velocity and orbit) have
been independently determined. Established showers officially receive their names during
IAU General Assemblies.
A meteor shower listed in the MDC database can be nominated for established status by
anyone if the shower fulfils criteria C1-C3. Criterion C4 is not obligatory but will
strengthen the shower candidate’s position.
C1 - The shower is represented by at least two sets of parameters (hereafter called:
solution) which have been observed/determined by at least two independent author teams.
C2 - Each solution was identified using at least 15 members of the shower (in the
case of single-station observations, at least 50 members) within one period of shower
activity.
C3 - The shower’s existence is supported by an evaluation of its statistical
significance in the local sporadic background or the existence is supported by an
estimate of the probability of a random coincidence of the orbits in the dataset used.
C4 - The stream parent body is known, or there is a candidate for the parent body, or
another mechanism of the stream formation is suggested.
Compliance with the C3 and C4 criteria must be confirmed by research and reviewed
publication submitted to the MDC.
The Working Group on Meteor Shower Nomenclature of the IAU (WG) must unanimously approve each nomination. Once the WG has approved a suggestion, the President of the WG, in agreement with the President of the F1 Committee, will contact the IAU. Nomination proposals will be presented at meetings of the Committee during the GA IAU. Once the IAU has approved a nomination and the shower has officially received its name, it will be moved from the Working List to the List of Established Showers in the MDC.
More details can be found in Hajduková et al., 2023
A meteor shower (meteoroid stream) listed in the MDC shall be moved to the List of Removed
Showers if one of the following criteria applies:
R1 - The correct bibliographic information for the stream identification is
absent.
R2 - The shower is found to be a duplicate of an earlier
discovered shower.
R3 - The shower has been found to be unreliable.
R4 - The stream was identified using fewer than three meteoroids.
Compliance with the R2 and R3 criteria must be confirmed by research and publications
submitted to the MDC. Moving a shower to the List of Removed showers does not mean its
elimination from the MDC. Each shower on that list has the possibility of returning to
the Working List when the criterion according to which it was removed (confirmed by
research, an article published and sent to the MDC) no longer applies.
The suggested criteria for removing showers were approved by a majority of members of the IAU Commission F1 who participated in the electronic voting completed on July 20, 2022.